Minister of Culture Recommends Subordinate Institutions to be More Proactive

Cultural institutions are searching for a way to streamline their activities, affected by various factors in recent years. The Minister of Culture, Raluca Turcan, asserts that cultural institutions need to be "much more proactive" in terms of cultural management, stating that she wants to amend the Law on the management of cultural institutions: "In cultural management, I strongly believe that each cultural institution should aim to be much more proactive, especially in this funding and organizational structure. If we don't try to diversify the resources available to us, we will constantly remain dependent on a national system that either does not treat the cultural domain with enough respect or has limited resources. So, looking at the relatively short tenure I have as minister and what is happening, I can firmly state that there are institutions that manage to reinvent themselves, understand their beneficiaries, diversify their activities and forms of funding, and reach beneficiaries faster than others, which are in a permanent deadlock and fear, transferring that anxiety to us when they fail to survive." Minister Turcan announced her desire to amend the Law on the management of cultural institutions: "I don't hide the fact that I plan, together with you, to modify the Law on the management of cultural institutions, a law to which I contributed at the beginning of my political career - I was the president of the Culture Commission when this law was drafted, and it needs upgrades. And these upgrades, I believe, will actually support you in your managerial activities." She reiterated the need to increase salaries in cultural institutions, emphasizing her advocacy for "a much more attractive and motivating salary structure in the cultural field, especially for those at the beginning of their journey": "I want to ask you, how can you ask someone with a higher education degree, who has chosen this path as a vocation, to work for a salary of 2,800 lei and at most, at the level of a councilor five, with 3,500 lei? How? If we don't express these things strongly, we will end up lamenting and wondering why culture is minimized and left aside." Raluca Turcan also advocated for "bringing the audience closer to culture" so that Romania becomes "a country that develops through culture, the most sustainable form of development."

In its 10th anniversary edition, the National Conference of Cultural Managers, organized by the National Institute for Cultural Research and Training, brought together managers of cultural institutions. The event included presentations, debates, and networking sessions.