Press Release September 2019 Alternative Culture Project Closing Conference

On September 25, at the Casa Filipescu Cesianu-Museum of the Municipality of Bucharest, Calea Victoriei 151, starting at 11:00, there will be the Closing Conference of the Alternative Culture project, a project initiated by the Flower Power Cultural Association, co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund, within the Operational Program Administrative Capacity-POCA 2014-2020.

The project "Alternative Culture" took place between 2017-2019 and had as target audience representatives of NGOs active in the cultural field, representatives of public institutions, and as beneficiaries, artists and representatives of social partners interested in the need for an Artist's Statute in Romania.

The overall objective of the Alternative Culture project was to strengthen the capacity of NGOs and relevant cultural actors to initiate, promote, implement and monitor public policies adapted to the current cultural context in Romania, in order to improve and synchronize it with the European and international cultural environment.

The sustainable benefits for the members of the target group following the implementation of the project were the following:

• Identification of good practices at international level regarding good practices in the field of culture
• Centralizing good practices in a qualitative study, accessible to all stakeholders 
• Collecting qualitative information from people directly affected by the lack of an artist status in Romania and formulating statistical data using the collected information
• Identification of specific needs in the field of culture, implicitly within the cultural sub-domains
• Increased interaction between interested and willing people for change in the field of culture
• Increasing the capacity of NGOs in the development and promotion of alternative proposals for public policies
• Increasing the degree of training of the members of non-governmental organizations in the development, elaboration and promotion of alternative proposals to public policies.
• Elaboration of alternative proposals for public policies, approach according to the specific of each sub-domain of culture, use of feedback from stakeholders

The final conference of the project will present, through the project team, the results and various details about the progress of the project and will announce the proposed activities for its sustainability period.

The final result of the project, an Alternative Public Policy Proposal to the current public policies is a compact document, imposed by GD 775/2005. For the elaboration of this document, a larger study was carried out, which can be consulted as an annex, on the website https://statutulartistului.ro

Within the activity of elaborating the Alternative Public Policy, coordinated by the Expert in Public Policies, Oana Năsui, documents were analyzed that offer important data on the current situation in the cultural field: definitions of the artist, creator, author in Romanian legislation, centralization of superior education institutions for the artistic-vocational , centralization of funding sources (MCIN, subordinated institutions, subsidies and directorships, collective management bodies with amounts collected and distributed in 2018), centralization of artistic professions in the Occupations Code in Romania, together with the laws currently regulating , in Romania, the rights and obligations of the artists and many other synthesized data. They are also made available by the project information platform, https://statutulartistului.ro

Within the legislative research that was the basis for the elaboration of the alternative public policy proposal, data were used from over 120 Romanian laws, with direct and connected address to the artists. The data resulting from the activities of the project were analyzed and studied: a history of the initiatives regarding the status of the artist in the broad sense and the ecosystems around it, the results of an online perception questionnaire regarding the status of the artist, attended by over 300 respondents, an applied legislative analysis - mix of 6 laws, an analysis of the economic impact of a public policy proposal and the feedback obtained in 9 debates conducted in the country in 2018 (191 participants), 5 working meetings with artists (100 people) - in 2018, 17 working meetings with 55 participants and stakeholders - in 2019.

The public policy proposal "Alternative Culture" bears the title " Strengthening a societal status of the artist, author, creator in Romania" and identifies a number of problems represented by the lack of a definition of the artist, creator, author in Romania (a qualified artist or a vocational artist, a hired artist or a contract free artist, an artist who wants and accepts to adhere to the structures of professional organizations or an independent artist), the lack of a general regulation applicable to the creation and activity of creative unions - as creator organizations, as professional associations, as representative and public utility organizations, lack of information of the artists on their rights and obligations, the shortage of institutions / organizations specialized in consulting on issues specific to the extended cultural sector.

The project "Alternative Culture" proposes two variants of solution, which we invite you to find details about, at the CLOSING CONFERENCE OF THE "ALTERNATIVE CULTURE" PROJECT, on Wednesday, September 25, starting at 11:00 am, at Casa Filipescu Cesianu-Museum of the Municipality of Bucharest.

The project team members, representatives of state cultural institutions, non-governmental organizations and journalists will be present.

The partners of the project "Alternative Culture": TVR, RFI, Radio Romania Cultural, Cultural Observer, Free Romania, Modernism.ro, Docuart.ro and the National Commission of Romania for UNESCO.