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Norway supports culture projects

Mammoth grants will help renovate historic buildings and museums

By Kimberly Ashton
and Hela Balinova
Staff Writers, The Prague Post
October 17th, 2007 issue

Cash for culture

Some projects receiving grants
Renovation of Strakonice Town Hall
Preservation of papers in National Library
Karel Škréta project in National Gallery
Czech Cubism Foundation project
Support of open-air Wallachian Museum

Source: Culture Ministry

Of the 111 million euro [$5.7 million/3 billion Kč] the Czech Republic is receiving from wealthier European Union countries, more than half of it will go toward cultural preservation.
The money, much of which comes from Norway, aims to help new EU countries to economically catch up with their Western neighbors.
Norway’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, Peter Raeder, told the audience at an Oct. 9 seminar regarding the grants that the money will also help bolster Czech-Norwegian relations.
“The [European Economic Area] grants provide important opportunities to collaborate not only on a political level, but also to strengthen ties between organizations in the two countries and develop commercial ties and tourism,” Raeder said.
The other two countries donating are Liechtenstein and Iceland. This year is the third that the Czech Republic, as well as other countries that joined the European Union in 2004, will receive the grants.
The 111 million euro allocated here began flowing into the coffers in 2004 and will be meted out until 2009, says Lucie Lapková of the Norwegian embassy in Prague.
Over that same time period, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein will also give 600 million euro to Spain, Greece, Portugal and the 10 countries that joined the European Union in 2004. Norway alone will nearly match that donation with an additional 567 million euro it plans to give to the 10 EU countries, Lapková says.
Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the union in 2007, will receive 140 million euro over the next two years.
According to information from the Czech Ministry of Culture, the grants “are mainly focused on the protection and renovation of cultural heritage, the protection of the environment, the support of the judiciary and the improvement of the healthcare system or children’s care.”
Public or private groups that receive money must contribute at least 15 percent of the value of the grant. This month, the Finance Ministry started taking proposals, which must be turned in over the next three months.
The projects that pass muster will be sent on for EC screening and donor approval, according to the European Economic Area (EEA) website, www.eeagrants.org, which states the purpose of the grants is “to reduce social and economic disparities within the EEA, and to enable all EEA countries to participate fully in the internal market.”
In 2005, the EEA gave nearly 23 million euro to the Czech Republic, with a chunk of that going toward the preservation and renovation of wooden buildings and to museums.
Of the total, 2.6 million euro went to the Wallachian Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, northern Moravia, and another million went to the National Library, according to the Culture Ministry. This grant went toward the preservation of 19th century documents — through microfilms and digitalization — that were on the verge of disintegration.
The following year the country got 42 million euro, and that went to, among other initiatives, a project about the famous painter Karel Škréta, to the restoration of Strakonice Town Hall, and to the Czech Cubism Foundation for a project called “Cubism in the Country.”

The writers can be reached at news@praguepost.com


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