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Croatia

Croatia

8. Creativity and Culture

8.6 Developing entrepreneurial skills through culture

Last update: 28 February 2023
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  1. Developing entrepreneurial skills through cultural activities
  2. Support young entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative sectors

Developing entrepreneurial skills through cultural activities

In Croatian educational system there are three types of secondary schools: grammar schools, vocational schools, and art schools (see Chapter 8.5. Developing cultural and creative competences).

Vocational schools offer numerous programmes that qualify students, thus supporting the development of an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action through the acquisition of practical skills, for vocations such arranger and scenic designer, clothes designer, graphic designer, web designer, ceramic designer, media technician, photographer, etc. Those programmes are usually clustered in graphic schools and schools for applied arts (but not exclusively).  For more information on organisation of vocational upper secondary education in Croatia you can visit Eurydice.

There is a Department of Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, which offers undergraduate and graduate study programme Cultural Studies (single major). In those programmes students acquire competences to work in cultural management, cultural tourism as well as in different types of institutions and organizations. No emphasis, however, is put on entrepreneurship.

There are four Arts Academy in Croatia that offer various study programmes in the field of theatre, visual arts, applied art, and art and culture. There are also the faculties of architecture and/or civil engineering in Zagreb, Osijek and Split that offer a study programmes in architecture and urbanism, and a design study. The Faculty of Graphic Arts in Zagreb offer a study courses in graphic engineering and graphic product design. The list of higher education institutions (ustanove iz sustava visokog obrazovanja) in Croatia is available on line as well as the register of study programmes.

The Croatian Employment Service offers a list of vocations with descriptions (opisi zanimanja).

The Law on Technical Culture (Zakon o tehničkoj kulturi, NN 76/93, 11/94, 38/09) states that technical culture, among other activities, includes education and training for acquiring technical, technological and IT skills and knowledge, innovative work, and spreading scientific and technical accomplishments with special concern of young people. The same Act enables foundation of Technical Culture Associations and their networks/alliances and states that technical culture is public need which fill be funded through the state budget.

The Croatian Association of Technical Culture (CATC) is the highest national institution in the field of technical culture in the Republic of Croatia and consists of 18 national associations, 19 county and 35 city technical culture communities, and more than 600 associations of technical culture with over 60.000 members. CATC’s members can be artistic-technical association such as Croatian Film Clubs’ Association and Croatian Photographic Union. Associations, national associations and CATC pay special attention to the extra-curricular education of youth, for example in  the field of photography and film.

 

Support young entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative sectors

The Republic of Croatia has no elaborated or adopted strategy for the development of cultural and creative industries. The Croatian Cluster of Competitiveness of Creative and Cultural Industries - CCCCCI, an association founded on the initiative of the Croatian Ministry of Economy RC, from the Economics Institute in Zagreb developed the Strategic Guidelines for Development of Creative and Cultural Industry 2013 – 2020 (Strateške smjernice za razvoj Kreativne i kulturne industrije). However, there is no mention of youth in those guidelines.

The Ministry of Culture and Media (MCM) publishes every year a Public Call for Encouraging Entrepreneurship in the Cultural and Creative industries (Javni poziv za poticanje poduzetništva u kulturnim i kreativnim industrijama za 2021. godinu). In 2021 MCM awarded 171 programs a total of 11,133,250.00 HRK (Odobreni programi 2021). The Call didn’t target young people in particular.