Synergies between public policies and programmes

There is a debate and upcoming reform about the implementation in the formal curricula of a “cultural and artistic educational programme”. See section 8.10 debates and reforms.

 

Currents Culture – Education Synergies



The main significant long-term synergy affects collaborations between culture and education sectors. 

Ministers of Culture and of Education signed in 2006 a common decree (revised in 2009 and 2014) to implement, to promote and to strengthen collaborations between Education and Culture. 

It aims at supporting cultural and artistic activities at school. It works through collaboration between schools and cultural operators (long term cooperation, punctual cooperation, etc.). 

The decree states the following objectives: 

• Give pupils access to culture and various forms of creation and artistic expression at school ; 
• Emancipate pupils by giving them the means to access different languages of creation, by helping them to develop their creativity, their imagination, by awaking their sensitivity ; 
• Inform young people about artistic creation sector, artistic studies, cultural jobs by meeting artists and professionals ; 
• Fighting school failure by taking into account the diversity of intelligences ; 
• Strengthening and enhancing collaborations aiming at initiating pupils to cultural and artistic activities, to the practice of these activities ;
• Providing teachers with information and learning tools to develop cultural and artistic activities with their pupils ;
• Raise education actors awareness about the importance of an artistic and cultural approach which is plural and continuing with its diversity of expressions and in its multidisciplinary dimensions.  

Every 3 years, the Government settles on a joint action programme (Programme d’Actions concerté) for a collaboration policy between Culture and Education as asked in the decree of 24 March 2006 (art 6).

The action programme includes:

• The strategies to adopt in order to reach the objectives of the decree ; 
• The actions to implement to reach these objectives ;
• The key indicators to evaluate how the objectives have been reached ; 
• The coordination process to increase the synergies between the cultural and educational sector ; 
• The propositions related to the implementation of privileged partnerships by ensuring that diverse artistic disciplines are represented ; 
• The propositions related to the collaborations implemented by the French-speaking Community. 

The cross-sectorial Culture-Education Department is a one-stop service whose missions are:

 

1.    The implementation of the 3-years joint action programme elaborated by the French-speaking Community’s Government ;

2.    The decision on the admissibility of sustainable and punctual cooperation projects and to transfer the admissible projects to the “Selection and Evaluation Commission” ;

3.    Centralising all demands from cultural or educational sector ;

4.    Updating and promoting an inventory of French-speaking Community’s initiatives to bring closer Culture and Education ; 

5.    Making an inventory and disseminating learning tools created by cultural operators or teachers ; 

6.    Fostering and facilitating the cooperation between cultural operators and teachers ;

7.    Organising meetings between pupils and artists ; 



The Culture-Education Department works in synergies with: 

• The General Administration of Culture ;
• The General Administration of Education ;
• The High Council of Media Education. 

The decree organises 3 support mechanisms: 

1. Sustainable cooperation: it supports cultural or artistic activities issued from a call for project, based on a school year, mainly realised during school time on the basis of a partnership convention concluded between the school and a cultural operator. The selected projects receive at most 4000 euros each. 
2. Punctual cooperation: it supports cultural or artistic activities initiated by a school or a cultural operator, not issued from a call for project, realised during school time or not, including a partnership convention. It is possible to introduce 2 different bi-annual projects. The selected projects receive at most 2000 euros each.
3. Privileged partnerships: the Government can conclude privileged partnerships with some cultural operators known for their good educational skills. It involves a funding over several years and a convention between the Government and the cultural operator. 

The Culture-Education Service runs its own budget (1 206 000 euros for the year 2017-2018) according to information provided by the Culture-Education Service. It covers all its activities (implementation of the decree, budget for the implementation of specific programmes, artists in residence programme, etc.). 



In the Region of Brussels, the Government has also implemented a programme to fund partnerships projects between schools and cultural operators. The projects must aim at fostering pupil’s creativity and cultural participation. It is named: “Culture is classy” (La culture a de la classe). The selected projects will receive at most 2400 euros for a class and 9600 euros by school. 

 

Partnerships between the culture and creative sectors, youth organisations and youth workers

Youth policies belong to the cultural sector. Youth sector depends on a different Minister than the others cultural matters (theatre, artistic creation, etc.). 



Youth workers are free to initiate partnerships with stakeholders of the cultural sector and vice versa. Many partnerships exist but there are at the initiative of the associations themselves. 



The Youth Department created a website in 2014 “cards for a cross-sectorial citizenship” (cartes de visite pour une transversalité citoyenne”. It introduces the work of youth associations through various themes (culture, education, media education, international, employment, etc.). 5000 euros were granted to the 21 projects presented in the folder. 5000 euros were used for the collective realisation of the folder. 

The website is no longer online.