Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 107

policy with European and global policy trends. A more balanced approach
to cultural traditions, cultural pluralism, and multiculturalism was in line
with the cultural reality of Croatia, and it was organizationally supported
by the decentralization of cultural activities and public financial sources.
This was reflected in the split of the public financing of culture, which was
continuously decreasing. In ���� the Ministry of Culture accounted for ��%
of the public expenditure for culture, the share of towns, including the capital
was ��%; while the participation of counties and municipalities was only
�% (Primorac, Obuljen Koržinek, and Švob-Đokić ����:��, ��). Cooperation
with a dynamically growing “independent” NGOs cultural sector, subsidized
mostly by foreign foundations, was established.
The general objectives of cultural policy (such as observance of aesthetic
and multiethnic cultural pluralism, creative autonomy, polycentric cultural
development, cooperation between the public and the private sector and
others) were proclaimed. These coincided with the cultural policy aims
in most countries—�� signatory members of the Council of Europe—
and reflected the intensions and efforts to integrate the Croatian cultural
development into the frameworks of European cultures and cultural policies.
The Croatia in the 21st Century: Strategy of Cultural Development (Cvjetičanin
and Katunarić ����), passed in the Croatian Parliament in ����, proclaimed
an overall goal of Croatian cultural development: the democratization
of culture. This goal was also supported by legal provisions and policy
instruments such as the distribution of funds. It resulted in a continuously
increasing cultural and media openness and communication, in growing
bilateral and multilateral cultural cooperation, and in initial links between
publicly supported and “independently” or privately subsidized cultural
programs and projects. Cultural policy became better structured and more
transparent.
Globalizing influences on such tendencies have been particularly visible in
a growing interest in and openness toward new contents and genres (e.g., in
plastic arts, theatrical experiments, modern dance, a hasty development of
TV series, and others), in mediated and mediatized cultural values, contents,
activities, and creativity; in an initial development of cultural industries and
industrialization of cultural production, including design, fashion, and other;
in emerging specialized, but small and fragile, cultural markets and the use
of new technologies in cultural production. Notwithstanding the transfer of
cultural policy standards, the cultural policy in Croatia remained focused
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