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1. Reducing obstacles to young people's access to culture

2. Disseminating information on cultural opportunities

3. Knowledge of cultural heritage amongst young people

Reducing obstacles to young people's access to culture

Policies/programmes/initiatives, their objectives and outcomes, and target groups

The Students Cultural Centres (SCCs) subordinated to the Ministry of Youth and Sports (until December 2021) and to the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities (from January 2022) organise every year a large number of cultural events opened to young people. According to their communication to the National Correspondent for Youth Wiki, each of them organises over 40 events every year (less during 2020 and 2021 when the number of events was lower due to the COVID-19 pandemic). These events have an average number of 2 000 young participants involved in cultural events and a reach of 5 000 to 10 000 people. Several hundreds of young creators are involved every year in the activities of the Students Cultural Centres (SCCs). These activities include all cultural fields: different music genres (folk, pop, rock, classical), visual arts with a special focus on photography, theatre, dance, literature and poetry.

Moreover, the SCCs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education are supporting Students Organisations to implement two National Students Festivals: Unifest (organised by the Union of Students in Romania) and Studențiada (organised by the National Union of Students in Romania until 2019). During the two festivals several events are organised and over 100,000 students per year have free access to movies, theatres, concerts, museums and exhibitions.

The "George Apostu" Cultural Centre in Bacau implements every year the project 'The Book Show. Public Readings', aiming to involve as many young people as possible in public readings. Thus, young people have the opportunity to get in touch directly with the Centre's guest writers. The project is implemented as an itinerary in several Moldovan (East Romania) cities, making it possible for the Romanian writers to meet with a diverse audience and for a larger number of young people to have access to contemporary literature. However, data are not available regarding the total number of participants to the project.

On the other hand, all the cultural institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Culture are offering access to their activities and exhibitions with reduce prices for pupils and students. However, free access for young people is not a common practice among cultural institutions and there are no programmes implemented with this aim. On the other hand, free access to cultural events, museums and exhibitions is generally granted to young people that are pupils or students to culture related specialties at the secondary or tertiary education level.

Main lines of public funding

For the respective institutions (the SCCs and the cultural institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Culture) funds for all the initiatives mentioned above are ensured using two different fund sources:

• the transfers from the state budget, received from the coordinating Ministry;
• their own revenues from tickets to cultural events or exhibitions or other activities (renting their spaces).

The student festivals of the student organisations are funded by the Students Cultural Centres (SCCs) with subsidies from the state budget transferred directly for the purpose by the responsibly Ministry.

Disseminating information on cultural opportunities

Description of the policies/programmes/initiatives, their objectives and outcomes, and target groups

No initiative could be identified having as main aim informing young people about opportunities to access cultural environments. All projects funded by the Students Cultural Centres (SCCs) and aiming at increasing the access to cultural events included activities to inform on cultural opportunities.

Knowledge of cultural heritage amongst young people

Policies/programmes/initiatives, their objectives and outcomes, and target groups

Several Students Cultural Centres used to organise large festivals of folk Romanian music each year, with the participation of young artists and a public of over 5 000 students at each of these festivals (according to their communication to the National Correspondent for Youth Wiki).

Excepting the dedicated funding provided by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund (presented in chapter '8.5. Developing cultural and creative competences'), no national policy or programme is dedicated to the support for young people to discover and appreciate the cultural and artistic heritage of European countries in general and of Romania especially.

Cultural institutions under the Ministry of Culture carry out several initiatives for knowledge of cultural heritage amongst young people (as they reported to the Ministry of Culture after the request sent by the National Correspondent for Youth Wiki):

• Two multiannual projects have been implemented in Bucharest named: '5 Museums, 5 Highs Schools' and '5 Theatres, 5 High Schools' allow the access and organisation of educational activities for pupils from 5 high schools (upper secondary education) from Bucharest;
• The Cinematographic Creative Studio in Bucharest organised in October, since 2015 until 2019, a series of workshops under the title: 'Cinema for all' opened for free to the public;
• The National Museum Complex "Moldova" organises museum pedagogy programs, with periodically updated themes;
• The National Museum of Natural History 'Grigore Antipa' implements projects representing temporal exhibitions targeting essentially children and young people;
• The National Museum of the Eastern Carpathians (Sfântu Gheorghe, Covasna county) implemented museum pedagogy programs, independent or in partnership with high schools in Covasna, Brasov and Harghita counties;
• The National History Museum of Romania (Bucharest) implemented museum pedagogy programs and it receives young volunteers to be involved in its activities;
• The National Museum of History of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca) implemented projects in 2016 representing temporal exhibitions targeting essentially young people;
• The "George Enescu” National Museum (Bucharest) implemented museum pedagogy programs, independent or in partnership with high schools;
• The National Village Museum "Dimitrie Gusti” (Bucharest) implemented museum pedagogy programs with several components
• The Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj implements since 2015 an educational project for children and young people, including workshops having young people as the main target;
• The "Marin Sorescu” National Theatre (Craiova) implements a programme including workshops having young people as the main target named "SpectActor Meetings”;
• The National Theatre in Târgu Mures organises theatre classes in the schools and high schools in Mures county and receives young volunteers to be involved in its activities (over one hundred young volunteers each year between 2016 and 2019);
• The "Mihai Eminescu” National Theatre (Timisoara) organises theatre classes in the schools and high schools in the town and county and implements two programmes including workshops targeting young people.
• The "George Apostu” Cultural Centre in Bacau implements every year the programme 'Culture-Education, Education-Culture', organising workshops and cultural events for young people
• The National Museum of Maps and Old Books (Bucharest) organised trainings for creativity in painting, graphics, sculpture, drawing in partnership with an art high school and other projects as: 'the class in the museum' for children and young people.

Data are not available regarding the total number of participants to all these projects and programmes.

Main lines of public funding

All the programmes and projects presented above have been funded by the state budget, through the budgets of:

• the Ministry of Youth and Sports, transferred to its subordinated Students Cultural Centres (after January 2022 the Students Cultural Centres will be supported by the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities);
• the Ministry of Culture, transferred to its subordinated cultural institutions.

The museums and theatres subordinated to the Ministry of Culture are funding their activities using their own revenues, in order to complement available funds from the national budget.

The Administration of the National Cultural Fund grants funding from the National Cultural Fund (based on provisions of the Government Ordinance no. 51/1998 on the funding of cultural projects, programmes and activities). „Education through culture” is one of the funding priorities. The National Cultural Fund is built by contributions from revenues of cultural enterprises, e.g.: 3% of the revenues of economic operators from the sale of postcards, posters and stickers; 2% of the revenues of economic operators from the sale of imported cultural goods, popular art products etc.