Strasbourg, 31 August 2000 CC-CULT (2000) 54A [PF: CC-Cult/21e réunion/document/ECC-CULT(2000)54A] COUNCIL FOR CULTURAL CO-OPERATION CULTURE COMMITTEE 21st meeting Strasbourg, 19 (9H30) – 21 (17H00) September 2000 (room 5) CULTURAL POLICY IN ALBANIA PART I: CONTRIBUTION FROM THE ALBANIAN AUTHORITIES PART II: REVIEW OF CULTURAL POLICY IN ALBANIA Report prepared by Mr. Peter Inkei DRAFT AGENDA, ITEM 9.1 DRAFT DECISION: The Committee - took note of the national and experts’ reports on cultural policy in Albanian; - congratulated the authors of the national report and the experts for their excellent work and thanked the Albanian delegation for its co-operation; - invited the Secretariat to assist them in implementing the recommendations arising from this analysis. CC-Cult(2000)54A 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I : GUIDE TO THE CULTURAL POLICY OF THE ALBANIAN STATE Preface by the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports 7 The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports 9 Cultural heritage 11 Books 24 Arts 31 Film 35 National Centre of Folklore Activities 38 International Culture Centre 40 Peace Bell 41 PART II: REVIEW OF CULTURAL POLICY IN ALBANIA Report prepared by Mr. Peter Inkei Foreword 46 Recommendations 48 Introduction 52 Past and present 53 Cultural policy 54 Identity of Albanian national culture 57 Budget 58 National institutions 59 International Cultural Centre 60 Protection of monuments 60 Museums 64 Libraries 65 Artistic projects 65 Fine arts 66 Theatre 68 Music 70 Folklore 71 Cultural industries 72 Books 73 Film 74 Municipal culture 77 The case of Berat 81 Minorities 83 Cultural greater Albania 84 Summary 85 3 CC-Cult(2000)54A CC-Cult(2000)54A 4 PART I: CONTRIBUTION FROM THE ALBANIAN AUTHORITIES GUIDE TO THE CULTURAL POLICY OF THE ALBANIAN STATE (PRIJËS NË LËMIN E POLITIKËS KULTURORE TË SHTETIT SHQIPTAR) Document prepared by the Albanian authorities 5 CC-Cult(2000)54A CC-Cult(2000)54A 6 GUIDE TO THE CULTURAL POLICY OF THE ALBANIAN STATE PREFACE BY THE MINISTER OF CULTURE, YOUTH AND SPORTS I had to consult with subtle workers of the mind to find the Albanian word "prijës" instead of the foreign word "guide", after wavering an instant between "prijës" and "përçor" (bellwether) without being able to decide, perhaps and since either one word or the other, both anyhow not so familiar for the ear, evoked besides the nowadays meaning also the other meanings which, as it seemed perhaps unjustly, might offer to the evil mouths "meat for their teeth". Anyhow whatever was done, at last this first prijës (guide) of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports was made, and it is reasonable that it has its own defects, but of course, it has its own goods. Hoping that, anyway, the goods exceed the defects and with the conviction that my successor, that probably will wish to make the second guide, will make it better than this first one and so on, I would like to list some words for the reader who will have not only the curiosity to leaf this guide to see the pictures, but also the patience to read it word by word to in order to understand where this Ministry, so much slandered in "my time", is trying to go and what it is dealing with, whose directors of the directorates, including the people of my cabinet, are almost all younger than I am, and I am not so old. To accept to become Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Affairs in the Albania of end of April '98 meant to face a structure and infrastructure of cultural and sports institutions which were held alive by an indescribable miracle of nature, whereas till that time, about eight years in freedom, it sufficed for the state to give for these affairs that so small budget of it (God has been willing that they have not Albanianised the word budget, which as it is told in the language of the old French, with its diminutive shape bougette, meant exactly "a small purse"), so its small purse now extremely small, somewhere between 0.3 - 0.5 %, without ever thinking to the proper measure and way for the undertaking of a multiple reform in the domain of culture and sports. Because the Ministers in succession, the same if "left" or "right" had preferred to pull but not to break the rotten thread of the old logic of the cultural administration, without managing even in a single year to spend that nothing comma something % that the governments had left in their hands with destination the institutions and the affairs described in this guide. I suffices to pass in review our cultural and sports institutions, their calendars of activity and the data of the attendance of these institutions by the consumers of the cultural production, in order to see in what point of need were reduced the affairs, while nobody had undertaken to raise in public the illusive curtain of beautiful words to show the cultural heritage in everyday ruin, the institutions peeled of moisture, the seats abandoned by the spectators, the empty pockets of the culture protectors and culture producers, the miserable conditions of their daily work, the shivering indifference of the potential native and foreign contributors and donators towards our culture and sport, and above all, the excruciating monologue of the Albanian culture of transition. Without waiting for a certain time to adjust or build something in the depreciated scene of the culture institutions, the author of these lines thought to raise the curtain in the eyes of the public, perhaps from the desire to find understanding, and why not, solidarity, in the paralysing ministerial armchair. This no doubt was his great tactical mistake, the most secure 7 CC-Cult(2000)54A evidence of the lack of political pragmatism, a result of the intellectual directness which is possessed in politics only by those short life protagonists who lack the ambition to "ascend". This mistake led to hundreds of articles devoted to the Minister personally ever since, usually contesting where, grosso modo, he was invoiced no more and no less but the destruction of the Albanian culture. But... anyway! His observations, right or not, on the past of this Ministry and the dramatic reality of the system of culture in the Albania of the years '90, are only one side of the medal. The other side is the work done in these 18 months in the administration of the Albanian culture, a summarising view of which I hope will be given by this first guide in the domain of the cultural policy of the Albanian state, which comes out exactly in the first moments of the years 2000. Many things might have been done better, as everywhere, but, if not for other things, for one thing I am very sure, for the fact that some good works have started to be made in a way that has only one direction: Forward! Edi RAMA, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports CC-Cult(2000)54A 8 MINISTRY OF CULTURE, YOUTH AND SPORTS The Ministry of Culture Youth and Sports (MCYS) is the state administrator of the culture in Albania founded with the Decree of the President of the Republic No. 1, date 08.05.1991. MCYS aims to bring the structure and the infrastructure of the Albanian institutions of culture and sports to European standards; this is an unalienable aim in facing successfully in the domain of culture and sports the everyday and comprehensive challenge of reforming all the Albanian state structures as a state of the European model. An Albanian State of the European model can not be understood without the cultural institutions of the standards of the civilisation to which the Albanians belong and at the same time without creating real chances - within a space of inviolable human rights and freedoms and known and legally approved obligations - to guarantee the fund of the cultural heritage, and the future itself of the Albanian culture defending its spiritual, material and intellectual constituents and by inciting their cultivation. To the function of its aim, MCYS holds as motives of its being: • The processing and application of a national cultural policy to reflect the necessity of a considerable cultural dimension in the overall democratic development of the country; the need of the assertion and strengthening of the cultural identity of Albanians in the context of the region in which they live and as an integral part of the European cultural identity; the tendency towards the international cultural co-operation; • The instigation of the cultural dialogue in the region of South-eastern Europe as a vital source of harmonious relationships among cultures characterised not only by different specifics, but also by common things, as means to promote an interethnic cohabitation, a culture of peace and tolerance in an area of variegated conflicts; • The protection, defence and promotion of the national cultural heritage as a condition for the moral perfection of the society and as a source still not exploited for the economic development of this society; • The following of a cultural policy which relies on the fact that in the reality of a democratic space, which tends continuously towards the expansion, there is no other way for the civil society than to win more and more weight in the sphere of culture and that relying exactly on this fact, it works to ensure the legal conditions to release all the creative energies of the society; • The compilation of the cultural and sports policies which aim at the enlargement of the ways of the social integration and the increase of the life quality for all the members of the Albanian society by instigating the solidarity and the tolerance towards The Other.