First knowledge sharing and capacity building session

On Friday, 30/09/2016 a meeting between representatives of Kultura Nova Foundation and Piet Forger, Head of the Department for Culture of the City of Leuven and representatives of the City of Čakovec and Platform for the Community Center Čakovec was held in Čakovec. With this meeting Kultura Nova Foundation started the “Knowledge exchange and capacity building” activity within the “Approaches to the Participatory Governance of Cultural Institutions” project.

Mayor deputy Romano Bogdan, Head of the Department for social, protocol and European affairs David Vugrinec and the President of the Culture Council of the City of Čakovec Davor Dokleja attended the meeting as representatives of the City of Čakovec, as well as Head of the Library “Nikola Zrinski” Čakovec Ljiljana Križan, Head of the Center for Culture Čakovec Ladislav Varga and Head of the Development Agency ČAKRA Damira Vresk. The Mayor Stjepan Kovač addressed the participants of the meeting with a short introductory note afterwhich David Vugrinec presented the history of City of Čakovec, scope of social affairs in the city and cultural activities in Čakovec. Director of the Kultura Nova Foundation, Dea Vidović shortly presented the project about participatory governance in culture and emphasized the importance of different aspects of governance of the city infrastructure and mechanisms of participatory governance that can provide conditions for quality participation in decision making, planning and implementation of innovative governance models in culture which can considerably contribute to the sustainability of the cultural system and development of the local community and by that also to sustainable urban development.

Piet Forger presented the work of the Department for Culture of the City of Leuven, guidelines of Belgian cultural policies focusing on socio-cultural centres, examples of socio-cultural centres in smaller environments and their potentials for sustainable local community development. Piet Forger proposed recommendations for enhancing local opportunities for sustainable development of the culture and the city and pointed out the importance of civil-public partnerships in cultural resources governance. Within his visit to Čakovec, Piet Forger also met with the representatives of the Platform for the Social Center Čakovec and discussed their initiative for establishing the social center in Čakovec and the challenges the Platform is facing.

Piet Forger is the founder and coordinator of “Vitamine C”, Flemish network of organizations in culture which is active in the field of shaping cultural policies in Flanders. He is the coordinator of Vlabra’ccent, umbrella organization that gathers more than 50 cultural centers in Flemish province Brabant. Piet Forger is also member of the Strategic Advisory Body for culture in Flanders which is engaged in issues of cultural centers, libraries, organizations in culture, education in culture, local cultural policies and inter-cultural dialogue. For more than 15 years he was a member of the theater company fABULEUS, cultural centre “30CC” in Leuven and platform for culture and education Magda in Leuven. From 2001 to 2006 he was deputy head of the CultuurNet Vlaanderen organization engaged in widening and intensifying public participation in the cultural life of Flanders. From 2007 to 2013 he was engaged as an expert of the European Commission for programmes Culture 2007 – 2013, and Youth in action 2007 – 2013. From 2014 he is the Head of the Department for culture of the City of Leuven.