European Round Table Meeting, Budapest (Hungary), 21-22 March 1994

Organised by CIRCLE in co-operation with the Brouhaha Hungary Foundation with the support of the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the Soros Foundation and the city of Budapest.

The invitation for CIRCLE to organise its 1994 Round Table in Budapest during the city´s European Cultural Month celebrations was significant in several aspects. It marked a return to the city in which CIRCLE´s first European Round Table had taken place in 1988. That event referred to as an East-West Research Round Table for fairly obvious reasons was significant not least for the theme of ´The State, Market, Culture´, chosen with remarkable prescience by our cultural research colleagues in Hungary.

The theme chosen for the Round Table in 1994 was also significant. This was an issue which had a particular resonance at a time when interest in independent or quasi-independent funding agencies or institutions for culture has been growing in Eastern and Central Europe, yet the position of such institutions appears increasingly to be undermined in some Western European countries. The 1990´s have seen budgetary constraints imposed even in countries in Europe with a long tradition of generous year on year patronage of culture, and there has been evidence of new tensions in the relationship between government and the intermediary bodies some appoint to administer or advise on the financing of culture. In some instances, such difficulties may have arisen because of structural changes and the emergence of new ministries of culture in countries where they had not previously existed. In other cases, new political priorities have challenged the role of arm length agencies.

Paradoxically, demand for greater accountability and participation in decision-making by regional and local tiers of government, together with a scepticism of centralised government control in the new democracies, has generated interest in developing alternative mechanisms for cultural support such as foundations or associations. The Round Table set out to examine these and related trends in Europe.

A final report from this round table was published in the form of a book, for more information click here.