Institutional development

According to the Article 15 of the Law on Culture, in May 2011 the Ministry established the National Council for Culture, arms-length body, with the mission to be an advisory body to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, the Ministry and the Government of the Republic of Serbia in preservation, development and dissemination of culture.

After approval of the Convention, the Department for Contemporary Production within the Ministry became the Department for Contemporary Production and Creative Industries. According to this, a unique position of Coordinator for Cultural Industries Development was established by the Regulation on internal organization and systematization of positions at the Ministry. The responsibilities of the Coordinator are as follows: to give an administrative and professional support to the development of cultural industries, to prepare analysis, reports and information on performance of activities in the field of cultural industries and propose measures for the improvement of condition in the field, as well as to prepare professional basis for laws and strategic documents.

As one of the forms of organizational and institutional measures of cultural policy, in 2010 the Ministry established a Working Group for the development of creative industries (Ministry Decision no. 119-01-26/2011-6) aiming to assist the Ministry in the development of support programs in creative industries and to work on establishing intersectorial cooperation in this domain. Specifically, to propose priority measures and activities and to work on establishing competition procedure, to propose budget for implementation of activities, as well as alternative models of funding, mapping of potential partners for cooperation and other. The Coordinator for Cultural Industries Development participated in the activities of this WG. The activities of the WG resulted in the "Creative Serbia 2020" program, as a proposal of measures and activities for the improvement of institutional and developmental support to creative industries in Serbia and encouragement of entrepreneurial spirit of all actors in creative industries. Due to the expiration of the mandate of the WG (2012), the project was not realized as a state program, but partners gathered around this project initiative continued working on the economic strengthening of creative industries through the platform of public-private partnership "Creative Serbia" coordinated by the Creative Economy Group, Belgrade. As the result of the WG activities, the publication "Creative Serbia" (2011) was published. Having in mind that civil society has been recognized by the Law on Culture as an important actor in cultural life and for development, the Ministry also established the Working Group for cooperation with civil society, which is still active. This WG was founded after the signing of the Protocol on Cooperation with the umbrella organization "Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia" that gathers about 78 civil organizations in the area of culture (Protocol on Cooperation No: 6-00-1/2011-01 of 19th January 2011). The WG was founded in order to establish the dialogue between the Ministry and civil society organizations, to work on needs assessment of independent artistic scene and its active inclusion in the implementation of the cultural policy. The institutional support to audiovisual field was given in 2011 by establishing of the Film Center of Serbia, in order to contribute to strategic development and transformation of cinematography in Serbia, as well as to perform cultural-educational activities in this area. The Film Centre is, along with the Ministry, in charge of realization of public competitions in the area of cinematography. They are being announced up to twice a year for production of national documentary, animated and short films, of minority co-production, andproduction of national feature films.

Challenges  identified in the implementation of this measure: The limiting factors for the development of new flagship projects were primarily law budget allocated to cultural industries and week resources (human, organizational, financial). The consequences of economic crisis decrease funding of cultural industries. Insufficient recognition of concepts of cultural industries at the local, regional, as well as national level. This measure was followed by numerous challenges; high quality communication to be established: Coordination of activities between these WGs; improving regulations and procedures and strengthening of inter-sectorial cooperation.