Sofia Municipality (Sofia Development Association) and the Red House Center for Culture and Debate presented the third of a series of discussions on: Sofia - a candidate for European Capital of Culture 2019: Priorities and funding mechanisms of Culture in Sofia: efficacy and visibility. Moderator of the discussion was Sevdalina Voinova, Program Director for Sofia Development Association.

Special guests of the discussion were Todor Chobanov, Deputy Minister of Culture, Malina Edreva, chairman of the committee on education, science, culture and religion, Sofia Municipality, Krasimira Velichkova, Director, Bulgarian Donors' Forum, Desislava Talyokova, Executive Director, Foundation America for Bulgaria, Nadya Zaharieva, Program Director, Arts and Culture Foundation "America for Bulgaria”, Ludmil Karavasilev, UBB, Diana Andreeva, Director, Observatory on the economy of culture.

The participants discussed successful and unsuccessful models of partnership between institutional and alternative tools to fund cultural events and projects. A number of good practices and opportunities were presented, for improving cooperation between public institutions, businesses, NGOs and cultural producers in order to increase the efficiency and the sustainability of the realized cultural products and projects.

• Key highlights and conclusions from the discussion:

- Improving the interaction between different organizations providing financial support to projects in the cultural sector and public institutions. According to the Bulgarian Donors' Forum the size of donations are increasing steadily but businesses still prefer to support initiatives in the social sphere, as it results in more rapid and visible way. Business representatives said that it is necessary to enhance communication among various stakeholders to achieve synergy between public-private partnerships. The business representatives presented various good and bad practices and models of interaction between different stakeholders: for example the revenues generated from ticket sales at the festival Fortissimo are deducted and the money are used to pay different musicians to teach students. Another good practice is the construction of the playground at the museum in Blagoevgrad, where for several months attendance has increased over 10 times, but at the same time the revenues that have been generated  do not remain in the museum and go to the municipal budget, and in this way it cannot be ensured sustainability of the investment.

- Need to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the realization of cultural events and projects: The representatives of business and foundations providing funds for cultural projects, emphasized  the need to establish mechanisms to measure the impact of realized events and projects in the cultural sphere, in order to achieve sustainability of the investments. Representatives of Sofia  Municipality said that work is already ongoing in this direction and that the Sofia Municipal Council has adopted rules and criteria to be met by projects financed by the municipality and that is embedded monitoring and evaluation of the impact of the implemented initiatives.

- Creation of  a common framework- strategy for development the Culture in Sofia, which includes all possible sources of funding, and indicators by which to measure the effect of cultural events and cultural products. Elaboration of this strategy is based on the widest publicity and stakeholder involvement. 

- Increasing the budget for culture: in relation with Sofia's candidacy for European Capital of Culture the budget for culture of the Municipality of Sofia for 2011. was increased by 1 million euro, making the Municipality one of the largest donors in this area. It was discussed the insufficiency of utilization  of funds under the European programs, that fund cultural events and projects and proposal has been made for organizing the training of cultural producers for project development. Also discussed was  the possibility of establishing fund for co- financing of projects since Programme Culture under the European Commission finances up to 50% of the projects. Proposals have emerged for organizing a municipal cultural lottery, and the establishment of funds through tax deductions for culture.

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