Why culture is out of date again: Ukraine facility vs Ukraine perplexity

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Recently, the European Commission announced a new, comprehensive tool for supporting Ukraine – the so-called Ukrainian Fund. In a fairly short period of time, namely within three months, Ukraine had to independently decide on priorities and reforms, formulate an accountability framework and expected results in order to receive 50 billion euros from 2024 to 2027 in the form of grants and loans.

After numerous conferences, round tables, foresights, expert focus groups and government meetings on the topic of reconstruction/restoration of various spheres of public life, this task should be as easy as possible to perform, and such a document should have been on the table of the Cabinet of Ministers for a long time, waiting for its time Take at least the lessons learned from the recovery conferences in Lugano in July 2022 and in London in June 2023.

This would be possible only in the conditions of existence of the “narrow corridor” of D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, when a strong state coexists with a strong society. This book is important for Ukrainians to read, because it is about everyone’s freedom and how to preserve it in the confrontation or interaction between the state and society, so as not to end up in two undesirable states: statelessness or authoritarianism. It is also about how to maintain cooperation in society and protect it from the manipulation of divisions and differences.

Synergy in the interaction between public authorities, business, media and civil society is very important, when everyone works for a common goal – to preserve and restore the human and physical capital of the country. Or at least there is a synergy between the authorities that create and implement policies.

Read also: The government is required to include culture in the EU funding program for the reconstruction of Ukraine

The situation with the preparation of another external document – for the European Union, the International Monetary Fund or other partners – showed that we are “reinventing the wheel” once again, hastily preparing a “new” complex document and then become hostages to the implementation of indicators that were prescribed in the absence of a unified system of success criteria reforms and a quality system for monitoring and evaluating the results of this success (qualitative and quantitative).

At the same time, the government does not have a “single point of collection” system for the achievements of all relevant departments, when they do not forget any of the branches, because there is a general vision of interdependence and mutual support.

The low level of management culture at the level of the system of executive authorities, the absence of a single strategic vision of state policy and understanding of the complexity of the processes of creating industry policies not in the paradigm of interdepartmental competition, but in co-creation. All this creates the effect of a “closed circle” of dozens of non-working strategic documents, which we continue to use year after year.

Therefore, it is not surprising that in the block on human capital and the block on reforms, we again do not see culture and creative industries. After all, there is an eternal conflict between the understanding of culture as a field of entertainment and excessive luxury, a misunderstanding of the contribution to the national GDP of the creative economy, which is the leading one in the post-industrial societies of the 21st century, and culture as the foundation, the basis on which other spheres of social life, such as the social sphere, education, grow , ecology, economy, politics, etc. And this misunderstanding only grows against the background of active hostilities.

Currently, the solution may be to change the approaches of “how to manage the government”, increase the subjectivity of civil society and decentralize the system of power decision-making, practice the principles of work for a long period with deep study of all layers of policy making.

And this is where culture plays an important role, it creates a single vocabulary for all creators and implementers of policies, it forms a code of ethics, where dignity, for which we lose human lives every day, is the basis, and political correctness is no longer a prerogative.

Because if we continue to live in the cultural codes of folk proverbs “a meek calf feeds two cows”, “live with wolves as wolves howl”, etc., then culture will continue to be next to cattle in reform programs, and human capital will only develop at the level of animal instincts.

The lack of leadership on the part of the relevant Ministry of Culture and Information Policy (MKIP) is also significant. After all, it will be the executor of the programs prescribed in the plan with clear indicators. Therefore, representatives of other specialized ministries again ask the question, do we need such a ministry and what is the “culture” that it should take care of.

Perhaps we need to eliminate the non-working government body and instead introduce the position of the Deputy Prime Minister for Culture and Information Policy, who will coordinate the comprehensive manifestation of issues of culture, national memory and information policy in the entire system of the Cabinet of Ministers, namely in each of the ministries, and will also be the moderator of the ecosystem of specialized central executive bodies (CEOs).

Expenditures in the state budget, provided for the ICIP, can be distributed between the existing TsOVVAs and specialized state institutions and enterprises, and for this, the necessary agency and inspection in the field of protection and preservation of cultural heritage can be created, and in the field of support for creative industries – the National Office for the Development of Creative industry

It is possible to expand the scope of powers of the institutions currently accountable to the ICIP. Finally, transfer the network of cultural institutions to the State Agency for Art and Art Education. The Les Kurbas Center will be reformed into a Theater Institute. The Ukrainian Center for Cultural Studies will be developed into an institution whose activities will correspond to its name, namely, it will strengthen the collection and analysis of data in the field of culture, the processes of development of regulatory and legal acts, etc.

The issue of information policy should be transferred to the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, expanding its powers, and the issue of information security to the unified Center for Combating Disinformation.

Such an approach will enable cultural policy to permeate the body of the Cabinet of Ministers and allow a people-centered approach to become the basis of policy making and state budget planning of a country with a thriving democracy and a strong civil society, as I personally see Ukraine.

Yulia Fedivpublic figure, cultural and media manager

Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

In the photo: Galagan palace in Sokyryntsy (Chernihiv region). Source: chernihivregion.travel

Read also: Why culture was forgotten in the Ukraine Facility or the test for democracy and readiness to join the EU

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