Measures to support artistic freedom include the rights to the support, distribution and remuneration of artistic activities, the right to the protection of artists’ social and economic rights and rights to participation in cultural life. In this regard, the priorities of the CSO include: 1) support for the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions and efforts to change the public perception of art and culture 2) improving conditions for the development of creativity, culture and art 3) improving the legal and social status of artists 4) improving conditions for constructive cooperation between the state and civil society in the development and implementation of cultural policy 5) improvement in conditions for effective cooperation between the CSO and international arts organisations on cultural policy 6) specific measures to overcome the negative effects of the emergency measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 1) Support for the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions and efforts to change the public perception of art and culture: The problem is the continuing lack of awareness of the UNESCO Convention and the meaning and importance of art and culture for the sustainable development of society. Much remains to be done to broaden public support for the Convention and increase people’s identification with its goals. The education system and media have a vital part to play in the long-term process of putting the Convention into practice: we believe that there is still not enough space for presenting culture’s contribution to the overall development and that as a result support for culture tends to remain at the level of words rather than satisfactory measures. Although Slovakia ratified the Convention in 2006, the public still knows little about the essence of the Convention. Without broader support among the public (many of whom regard art as nothing but luxury or entertainment, or even as something unnecessary that society could manage without), it is unrealistic to expect a fundamental change in the standing of culture as regards conditions for developing creativity, culture and art. The CSO therefore seeks to use every opportunity to explain on the one hand the meaning and essence of art and on the other its economic benefit – the significance of the cultural sector’s contribution to GDP and job creation. The SCCD and its member organizations have organized many events, lectures and discussions for the public on issues such as the importance of culture and art for the development of society, the legal and social status of artists, the mobility of artists, the status of the artist, the promotion of the objectives and principles of the Convention and other topics, often to coincide with regular events – World Art Day (15 April), Night of Museums and Galleries (May), Bratislava Art Festival (BLAF – September/October) and White Nights (autumn) – and also in regions outside Bratislava. As our opportunities permit, we also comment in the media (television, radio, newspapers and magazines), on the web, in the SUVA yearbooks and we publish specialist publications (Slovakia and UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions – 2017, PDF version online; Future of work in the arts, media and entertainment industries / Challenging atypical work – 2017, PDF version online; Black Sheep of Art? Art and Society: Myths and Facts, 2018 – published as a book and available online as a PDF). On 2) Improving conditions for the development of creativity, culture and art: On behalf of the CSO, we have made repeated efforts over the last 4 years (e.g. at meetings of the Government Council for Culture) to comment on and propose solutions for several laws that could contribute to improving conditions for the development of creativity, culture and art: – A sponsorship law that would motivate the private sector to support culture and thus contribute to multi-source financing of culture: despite promises, it has not yet been drafted. We welcome the new government’s commitment to preparing such an act. – Amendment of the building act to raise the cultural standard of public spaces and improve conditions for art in architecture: the proposal includes an obligation for works of art to be included in new building projects or the renovation of existing buildings financed from public funds and to protect existing works of art that are part of public buildings. Although the government approved the amendment of the building act on 27 May 2015 and it was twice submitted to the National Council of the Slovak Republic (in 2015 and in 2019 after further deliberation in the working group and the Government Council for Culture), it has not yet been passed. – The establishment of new funds (the Art Support Fund and the Fund for the Promotion of the Culture of National Minorities) and the increase in fund budgets (including that of the Audiovisual Fund) have clearly contributed to the development of artistic production. On the other hand, artists have long requested simpler administrative requirements for the allocation of grants to support artistic production and projects. – We also welcome the implementation, over the last four years, of the amendment of the Act on Broadcasting and Retransmission that parliament passed in 2015, which established a duty for private and public radio stations to dedicate set percentages of broadcasting time to Slovak works: The Slovak Coalition for Cultural Diversity (SCCD) has always been committed to cultural diversity and support for domestic artistic production. – On the other hand, a negative phenomenon has been failure to achieve the government’s objective to increase cultural expenditure in line with the Cultural Development Strategy 2014−2020, which the government of the Slovak Republic adopted on 14 May 2014: although it halted the 20-year decreasing trend in the share of spending allocated to culture, the declared goal – 1% of GDP by 2020 – was not achieved. Expenditure on culture between 2011 and 2017 was 0.76% of GDP (published data indicates that Slovakia’s position slightly worsened in 2017, to 0.7% of GDP). This means that although we are no longer on the bottom (0.39% of GDP in 2011), spending on culture as a share of GDP amounts to only half of the cultural and creative sector’s contribution to the GDP of the economy as a whole (in three years between 2012 and 2017 it exceeded 1.5% and in two years it was above 1.6%, achieving its maximum share of 1.69% in 2016) and their share of employment of the Culture Creative Industry (CCI) in the overall economy (over the same period it ranged between 1.41% and 1.48%). A quotation from the interim report Review of Spending on Culture (Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic, October 2019): According to the available international data, Slovakia’s spending on culture in 2017 amounted to around 0.7% of GDP (EUR 591 million, 1.68% of public expenditure). It is 0.05% less than the average share of GDP in the EU and 0.35% less than the average share of GDP in the V4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). On 3) Improving the legal and social status of artists: Improving the legal and social standing of artists continues to be one of the priorities of the CSO. Artistic freedom is largely guaranteed in Slovakia (the right to create without censorship or intimidation, the right to freedom of movement, the right to freedom of association, the right to participate in cultural life) but issues become more complicated when considering economic measures that support artistic freedom: the right to support, distribution and remuneration of artistic activities, the right to the protection of artists’ social and economic rights. In other words: if conditions are not created for artists to make a living from their creative work, they have very limited opportunity to exercise their right to freedom of expression and their right to participation in cultural life even if they have undisputed possession of such rights. The reality is that art is one of the 4 worst-paid sectors in Slovakia: the average income in art is just 72.36% of the average income in Slovakia overall (report of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 6 September 2016, SITA and ČTK). It is also a fact that culture is usually the first area to experience cuts whenever there are problems, as can be seen in the decisions of self-governing authorities in response to the negative effects of the emergency measures taken to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. On 1 January 2016, the first day of the 4-year evaluation period, a law came into force that provided legislative implementation of the first stage of the Status of the Artist concept in Slovakia (it was passed by parliament on 11 November 2015). It dealt with the definition and registration of professional artists in the liberal professions in accordance with the conception of the Status of the Artists, thus opening the way to tackling artists’ specific problems. It was expected (based on the explanatory memorandum submitted with the law) that it would soon be followed by specific measures building on the initial stage, which would give it real content that would improve the social status of artists. Although we prepared specific legislative proposals on behalf of the SCCD, none of them has yet been adopted as law. The adopted legislation thus remains a formal declaration without impact on artists’ real life. We unequivocally welcome the fact that the new government plans to make this law work. – One of the planned legislative measures based on the act referred to above was aimed at reviving the art market. The current situation in tax law (which artists consider to be discriminatory) is that works of art are excluded from standard business relationships: spending on the purchase of works of art cannot be used to reduce the tax base. This harms not only artists (by reducing their ability to make a living from their own creative work) but also the state, because decimating the art market and pushing it into a grey economic zone not only promotes vulgarity but ultimately also decreases the government’s tax revenue. In June 2019 the Government Council for Culture asked a temporary working group to propose a solution and there were constructive negotiations between artists and representatives of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family and the Ministry of Finance. Due to the forthcoming elections, there was not enough time to complete the negotiations with the Ministry of Finance. We continue to see this as a key measure for the visual arts. – Implementation of the laws that the arts community has been requesting for years (e.g. a sponsorship act and amendment of the building act) and fulfilment of the government’s 2014 commitment to increase spending on culture (see (2) above) would also contribute to a better legal and social standing for artists. – The social status of artists would also be improved by artists having real opportunities to exercise the right to engage in collective bargaining. On 4) improving conditions for constructive cooperation between the state and civil society in the development and implementation of cultural policy: Substantive, correct and constructive cooperation between representatives of the CSO and artists on the one hand and the government on the other is in the interests of both sides: artists have in-depth knowledge of the issues affecting culture while state representatives are in a position to have a real impact on the situation. Since its foundation, the SCCD has sought the establishment of permanent advisory bodies where civil society is represented to pursue constructive and systematic cooperation on solutions to current problems in culture and the preparation of legislation. The SCCD welcomed the establishment of the Government Council for Culture and its committees (the Committee for art, the Committee for public cultural awareness activities, the Committee for the media etc.) and working groups (the Working group on analysis of the remuneration of cultural workers and proposals for improving the level of their remuneration, the Working group on the status of the artist, the Working group on the recodification of copyright in the Slovak Republic, the Working group on the building act etc.), the Government Council for Non-governmental Non-profit Organizations and the Sectoral Council of the Ministry of Culture on the National Occupational System and the National Qualification Framework in respect of an EU project to increase employment, the Sectoral Council of the Government High Representative for Civil Society etc., in all of which the SCCD was represented. We make constant use of our representation in government and ministerial advisory bodies to comment on key documents and legislative proposals, of which we are not infrequently the initiator; we also propose measures to improve the situation in the cultural sector and increase culture’s influence on the sustainable development of our society; we warn of the negative effects of long-term unresolved problems in culture and we propose constructive solutions for address these problems. We also pursue this purpose through space we receive in the media, on our websites (the SCCD site has received 350,000 visits and the sites of the Slovak Union of Visual Arts and partner organisations have also received hundreds of thousands of visits) and in our publications. We consider it our duty not just to criticise and point out shortcomings, but also to support constructive proposals from the Ministry of Culture and to offer realistic proposals of solutions incorporating the experience of our foreign partners. Space has undoubtedly been created for communication between the state’s official representatives and the CSO. Nevertheless, there are persistent problems that we repeatedly highlight: – although the work of the CSO’s representatives in advisory bodies, in the preparation of the strategy of culture policy, legislation etc., has the potential to provide input to official institutions from those who are intimately familiar with an issue (because they have worked in the area concerned for long years, if not their whole life), to allow the ad hoc expansion of institutions’ expert capacity (because they do not and cannot have experts with experience of every specific area at issue), to offer the practical experience of a broader team of experts including relevant input from abroad, and to increase the chances that the competent authorities (which unlike the CSO representatives has the natural right to make the final decision) will adopt high-quality decision thanks to consideration of various points of view and critical comparison and debate between them, – although such work on the part of CSO representatives is highly specialised and cannot be done by just anyone, is difficult and exhausting, demands a great deal of time and energy and requires long, systematic work without which it would be impossible to achieve results, it is based almost exclusively on the enthusiasm and dedication of individuals from the CSO, who often spend hundreds of hours over many years on the specialised work of reviewing or proposing legislation, preparing analyses etc. Such work receives essentially no systematic support from government and public administration bodies, nor from grant-providing institutions (long-term experience has shown that positive exceptions are very rare, almost negligible). Although this difficult, specialised work is in the public interest, it is essentially not considered to be work and in practice it is outside the scope of any legislation (the laws on the minimum wage, overtime and social benefits). A practical effect of dividing workers into two categories (on the one hand those to whom the law guarantees rights and social protection and on the other those who work without any rights) is that only a very limited number of people are willing and able to engage in such work for long time (while their strength holds and their own families are willing to tolerate it) and it is difficult for them to find replacements for themselves, which undoubtedly has a negative impact on the CSO’s future potential to contribute to increasing the quality of the results achieved. The importance of civil society activity was the subject of extensive analysis and broad discussion at the ninth session of the UNESCO intergovernmental committee on the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (Paris 14–16 December 2015). To cite at least one thought: Analysis shows that countries with stronger and more developed civil societies move faster in ratifying the Convention and are better placed to meet the Convention’s expectations than countries with weak civil society organisations. We therefore consider it vital to improve conditions for effective cooperation between the CSO and the government and public administration. On 5) improvement in conditions for effective cooperation between the CSO and international arts organisations on cultural policy: In our view, finding more effective solutions to cultural questions, including those of transparency and responsibility, requires the creation or application of systematic support instruments for effective cooperation between artists themselves on the national and international level (sharing of information and positive solutions, the reaching of agreement on questions of priorities, mutual support in promoting them). This would enable artists to be constructive and respected partners for officials, to the benefit of both sides. So far, the SCCD has largely succeeded in this. The SCCD is the co-founder of: - the European Coalition for Cultural Diversity (ECCD), together with coalitions of professional artists from Germany, Belgium, France and Spain – International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (IFCCD), Seville, 19 September 2007 The SCCD is an active participant not only in these organisations (it has been repeatedly stated at plenary meetings of the IFCCD – e.g. at Montreal in 2018 – that the SCCD is one of the most active members of the IFCCD; it was a member of the board of directors of the IFCCD until October 2019, vice-president of the ECCD until February 2020, it organised the IFCCD and ECCD Congress in Bratislava etc.) but also in the International Association of Art Europe (IAA Europe – a member of the executive committee from 2008, secretary from 2009, 2010–2015 and again from 2019 operation of the IAA Europe Office in Bratislava, 2011 to 2015 and again from 2019 the position of President), the IAA/AIAP (member of the world executive committee 2011–2021, from 2015 coordinator for Europe, from 2017 vice-president), the European Council of Artists (ECA) and Culture Action Europe (CAE). Since 2015, it has been a member of the UNESCO intergovernmental committee on the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, where it prepared a draft UNESCO recommendation on the Status of the Artist, which was sent to the secretary of the Convention, Danielle Cliché in November 2015, which proposed making use of the experience generated by the broad international consultation that the SCCD initiated and the successful preparation of the first stage of the act in Slovakia and the preparation of the next logical step, which is in accordance with the UNESCO recommendation of 1980 and the UNESCO Convention of 2005 – a recommendation to member states to support the implementation of the Status of the artist as a an instrument for solving specific problems in the cultural sector in various countries which could make a significant contribution not only to the development of the cultural sector but also to society as a whole and sustainable economic growth. Initiation of international discussion on the status of the artist on four continents, summary of the results in a 150-page English-Slovak publication. We have organized and taken part in many international events, workshops and conferences, in particular on issues relating to the legal and social status of artists, artists' mobility, the status of the artist, the exchange of knowledge in the arts, issues of financial remuneration to artists (the MU agreement), the status of cultural institutions amongst others, often as the main speakers. Active participation in international activities is not easy for the CSO but it is an excellent school enabling its representatives to gain experience that can be applied on the national level. Nevertheless such activity largely shares the problem mentioned under the previous point: it heavily relies on the enthusiasm and dedication of individuals in the CSO who commit a great deal of time and energy to specialist work preparing and organising international conferences, workshops, presentations and the coordination of international teams of experts, often over many years. The existing grant schemes offer very little understanding and support for systematic work on cultural policy, the legal and social standing of artists etc. In fact, their attitude borders on dismissal. The situation has in fact deteriorated compared to the past: until 2016 a contribution to the membership fees of international organisations was approved more or less regularly by the Ministry of Culture’s grant system, whereas in the current year the SCCD has received no contribution towards its activities or even its membership in the IFCCD despite its long and extensive activities in this global organisation. Several times we were rescued by our foreign partners who provided us support incomparably faster, simpler and more flexible assistance than we have experienced in Slovakia. The long-term lack of understanding and support for international activities forced us to ask ourselves again and again whether we would be able to continue in our cooperation with international organisations and whether we would have to resign from our positions despite the respect we had acquired: in the end we were left with no choice. We have resigned from our positions in the executive committees of the ECCD and IFCCD despite being asked to continue (October 2019 and February 2020) and we will submit our resignation to the IAA/AIAP at the next plenary session next year. On 6) specific measures to overcome the negative effects of the emergency measures related to the COVID19 pandemic: The last, but by no means least important point is the need to adopt adequate, targeted measures to overcome the negative effects of the COVID-19 emergency measures. We appreciate that representatives of the CSO have been given space in the Ministry of Culture’s emergency working group where potential solutions can be discussed openly. Negotiations are still ongoing, so it is too early to draw conclusions. We believe that their outcome will help to calm the cultural sector and send a signal that culture still matters, especially in a situation where we hear a lot about cuts in cultural spending in the budgets of self-governing authorities and when it is increasingly apparent that the return to normality will be longer and more painful than it appeared at the start of the crisis.