Promoting Proposals from the Culture Recovery and Resilience Plan at All Levels

Slovakia’s cultural sector has long suffered from the absence of a systematic cultural policy. Cultural workers are not adequately represented in political decision-making processes, and their demands remain fragmented, resulting in ad hoc decisions made without professional consultation. Cultural funding is unpredictable, selection procedures lack transparency, and cultural institutions face increasing pressure on their independence. Groups historically overlooked in cultural policy — including the LGBTQI+ community, regional cultural actors, and independent cultural organisations — continue to face structural barriers in accessing publicfunding and cultural infrastructure.

At the same time, cultural policy in Slovakia has been marked by a long-term absence of systematic dialogue between the state and local and regional governments, although municipalities and regional authorities manage a substantial part of the country’s cultural infrastructure and directly shape the conditions for cultural activity at local and regional level.

These challenges are interconnected and stem from a common issue: the cultural sector has remained fragmented and reactive, lacking the tools for coordinated, evidence-based, andpolitically targeted advocacy. As a result, culture continues to be marginalised in political decision-making, while binding strategic documents capable of ensuring its long-term development are missing.

The project responds to these challenges through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Culture (POOK or the Plan) — an innovative, bottom-up coordinated, expert-driven, and politically addressed set of measures designed to strengthen the sustainability, resilience, and democratic governance of culture in Slovakia.

The project aims to translate the cultural sector's expert consensus, captured in the Recovery andResilience Plan for Culture, into concrete, measurable political commitments — and thereby actively shape cultural policy in Slovakia ahead of the 2027 elections.

The project implements three interconnected groups of activities:

• Finalisation and presentation of the Plan. By March 2027, the Plan will be completed as an expert-consulted action plan with implementablemeasures and publicly submitted to political parties, local and regional authorities, and the media.
• Structured multi-level advocacy. The team conducts advocacy negotiations at the national level (parliamentary parties, Ministry ofCulture of the Slovak Republic), regional level (self-governing regions, SK8 - Self-governingRegions of Slovakia) and local level (towns and municipalities via the ÚMS - Union of Towns ofSlovakia and ZMOS - Association of Towns and Villages of Slovakia ). Advocacy is carried out intwo waves — the first from 12/2026 to 02/2027 and the second in 04/2027 — concluding in 09/2027. The Open Culture! International Conference in 05/2027 serves as a platform for public debate withrepresentatives of political parties.
• International exchange of experience. Collaboration with Norwegian partners Creo and Kulturdirektoratet brings proven advocacy tools,a methodology for measuring advocacy success, and the perspective of institutions that arethemselves the target of advocacy efforts. The team will undertake a study visit to Norway, and the Norwegian partners will participate in the Open Culture! conference.

Throughout the project, ongoing monitoring and documentation of advocacy results will becarried out, including updates to the measures database. The project will conclude with a finalreport and a public presentation of results in September 2027.

The project tracks results at three levels:

1. Political results. The measurable output of the project is the extent of political commitments made in relation to measures from the Plan: at least 60% of specific measures will be explicitly supported by aminimum of 3 political parties, at least 2 of which will incorporate them into their policy documents. At the regional level, at least 3 self-governing regions will formally confirm acommitment to implement at least 1 measure; at the local level, at least 5 municipalities will include measures from the Recovery and Resilience Plan in their cultural strategies. The primary beneficiaries of these results are cultural workers and cultural organisations, whose operating conditions depend on the quality of cultural policy.
2. Sectoral results. At least 50 experts from the cultural sector will be actively involved in the advocacy process. For the majority, this will be their first direct experience of political advocacy. The cultural sector —historically reactive and fragmented — will gain capacities, relationships and a network of collaborating actors that will remain within the community permanently. The project is of particular benefit to groups that have long been overlooked in cultural policy — the LGBTQI+ community, regional culture and the independent cultural sector — whose interests are explicitly represented in the Plan and for whom advocacy directed at local and regional authorities is especially relevant.
3. Systemic results. The project establishes a replicable model of participatory, bottom-up public policy-making, andthe cultural community becomes a mediator of the missing dialogue between the state and localand regional governments. This precedent serves as an inspiration for other areas of civil society.