The Council of Professional Artists’ Associations (RUO) hereby publicly appeals the deputies of Prague City Assembly to act in accordance with the valid Cultural Policy and Grant Policy of Prague Municipality and adopt all steps necessary to facilitate a most expeditious award of the city’s cultural grants for 2008. The current suspension of all cultural grants will otherwise gravely endanger the preparation and the implementation or production of cultural projects in the capital for the upcoming year as well as cultural organisations’ standing in the eyes of donors and other cooperating organisations at home and abroad.
RUO voices its disagreement with the critique of the existing grant-award system presented repeatedly in the media by Prague Councilman Milan Richter. The grant-award system which Councilman Richter (responsible for culture, conservation and tourism) has lately kept attacking, was formulated on the basis of opinion of a number of renowned experts, and as such was adopted only in 2006. Today, a mere year and a half after its implementation, and prior to any evaluation of its impact, it is absolutely premature to revise it and make any major change of the kind that has been characterised by the media and (Prague Assembly) Print 4983 as admission subsidies quoted specifically as “subsidies for tickets sold”, for any such act would in effect essentially change the valid grant-award criteria which have never been rescinded by the City Assembly.
RUO in principle protests the repeated attempts to discredit the existing criteria for the evaluation of cultural grant applications (cf. the said Print 4983) which include the „international impact, artistic contribution, preservation and advancement of varied artistic expression and tradition, and support of alternative culture“. In the European context, the said criteria are considered as standard, represent the recommendations of expert working groups established by [Prague] Mayor Pavel Bém and in fact were adopted only as lately as in June 2006 by both the City Assembly and the City Council. Moreover, the criteria respect Article 151 of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty, observe the principles of the Concept of a More Effective Support of the Arts in 2007–2015 adopted by the Czech government in 2006, and reflect the [UNESCO] Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions passed in October 2005 and adopted by the European Commission in March this year. They are likewise in accord with the European Agenda for Culture in a Globalising World (cf. European Commission Statement from May this year.)
RUO in principle rejects the repeated attempts to question the professional competence of the cultural grant award commission and its allegedly subjective and biased rulings, as stated in the Information on the Current State of the Prague City Government Cultural Grant System, presented to City Council for discussion on 18 September 2007 in the form of the said Print 4983. RUO feels obliged to point out that external experts working on the commission were nominated on the basis of recommendations made by widely renowned and respected cultural organisations that have taken into account the nominees’ professional CVs and expertise in the field of cultural project evaluation. RUO therefore considers all slurs of these experts’ professionalism as utterly unfounded and unacceptable.
In fact, it is more than surprising that the system of support for culture projects in the upcoming year has quite suddenly been abolished in its entirety when only grants for particular subjects could have been temporarily shelved in response to the complaint filed by [commercial theatre operator] Mr. Kratochvíl which formally triggered the total suspension. In other words, justifying the suspension of all cultural grants must be seen as nothing but an artificially construed pretext used to effect what seems to be the real reason, i.e. an attempt to destroy and annul the existing system of cultural grant awards and at the same time divert the public away from questioning a much more problematic system of the city’s awarding money to various “partnerships¨, formerly termed as “co-production projects“. All statements made to the effect that a failure of any cultural project to receive financial support from public funds (the claim of which in fact lacks any legal title) would damage operators as it does not protect their investments must be refuted with all resolve. At the same time, it is necessary to systematically provide for an appropriate application of the de minimis rule with respect to the grant payments, rather than to the application assessment procedures, as only professional evaluation can make sure that public funds are used to support non-profit cultural projects rather than those devised solely by commercial, i.e. to profit-seeking interests. In this respect, RUO also deems it necessary to point out that according to the ruling of the Antimonopoly Commission, adherence to the procedures of the existing cultural grant-awarding system precludes any inappropriate use of public funds.
Prague, 19 September 2007
Simon Pellar
Chairman, Council of Professional Artists’ Associations (RUO),
Vice-President, European Council of Artists (ECA)
www.ruo.cz
e-mail: ruo@proculture.cz
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