On Wednesday, April 9, the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), in cooperation with Open Culture, released a report entitled "Early Warning: The Politicization of Slovak Arts and Culture". The document is a critical summary of the Slovak government's actions in the field of culture. Its key message states that since October 2023, the Ministry of Culture, led by a nominee of the junior coalition party SNS, has been attacking artistic freedom by vetoing projects that are not in line with the government's views, as well as by replacing staff with politically loyal candidates.
The Ministry of Culture claims that public grants are not automatically allocated to those who have received them before. It advocates the changes at the highest levels of representative institutions such as the Slovak National Theatre, the Slovak National Gallery, the Slovak National Museum, the Slovak National Library, the Slovak Literary Centre, the Slovak Arts Council, etc. by its dissatisfaction with management practices in leadership and management.
19 Slovak artists and cultural workers provided interviews for this international research conducted by sociologist Irene Pavesi, a senior researcher focused on political interferences in the management of cultural institutions, Jenifer Laourou, a human rights advocacy coordinator, and AFI’s co-executive director Sanjay Sethi.
Source: RSI
