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How will the financial crisis affect the arts in the Czech Republic?

Article Excerpt
All the indications are that the cultural sphere and the "creative industries" altogether will be facing lean times in the coming years, especially as concerns funding. It is therefore high time for us to be asking how the crisis will impact on music and the arts in general in the Czech Republic?

If we are talking about the funding of culture, for several decades now there have been two basic models: the American and the European. The European model is built on the principle of state responsibility for and subsidy of the arts. The American system of support for the arts is based on the tradition of philanthropy--patronage by companies and individual donors. In the USA there is no ministry of culture, for example. In a period of financial crisis, however, private donors become scarcer and less generous. The president of the Kennedy Centre in Washington and well-known crisis manager Michael Kaiser, whose achievements have included saving the Royal Opera House in London from bankruptcy, says of the present situation:

"Nobody has any idea of where this will stop. I have never before seen the level of donations and subsidies rail so rapidly"

(daily Baltimore Sun 23rd November 2008). In the United States the crisis has already destroyed one opera company (in Baltimore) and other institutions are being forced to put off planned premieres (for example the Washington National Opera's costly projected production of Wagner's Ring).

The American model is therefore collapsing and more and more leading cultural managers are calling for state intervention. In an article for the Washington Post (29th December 2008) Kaiser appealed for an immediate state injection of finance for arts organisation. He also appealed for changes in the law and greater tax relief for donors to the arts. In the USA the culture sector provides 5.7 million jobs and has...