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1. Acquiring cultural and creative competences through education and training

2. Specialised training for professionals in the education, culture and youth fields

3. Providing quality access to creative environments

Acquiring cultural and creative competences through education and training

Formal education

Visual arts (drawing and painting) and music are mandatory subject in the curriculum in secondary education at national level until the 10^th grade (for young people of 15-16 years old). A total of one hour/week is included in the mandatory curricula for each of the two subjects. High schools can decide to add one hour/week in their curricula for arts education classes. The grading system is the same for all compulsory subjects, based on a progression scale for national-level assessment.

The Literature is a mandatory subject for all educational levels until tertiary education (exclusively), with five to eight hours/week included in the mandatory curricula. Universal literature is studied in the 9^th grade (for young people of 14-15 years old), while Romanian literature is studied in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th grade of the upper secondary education.

The Ministry of Education develops the mandatory curricula, including mandatory competences and skills and activities to be carried out during literature classes, arts and music educational classes.

Vocational education is available for all cultural/art fields, including visual arts and design, theatre, music, choreography and architecture in most of the large cities of the country. Vocational education at the level of upper secondary education includes intensive training in the field of specific arts.

Romania is under the European average in the field of cultural formal education, with 13.1% out of the total number of tertiary education students enrolled in culture-related fields of education, according to the Culture statistics 2016 of the Eurostat. Broken down by field, 2% of the students are following art specialisations, 7.1% are following humanities specialisations, only 1.7% study architecture and town planning and 23% study journalism and information sciences. In this last field Romania being the European country with the second largest proportion of students after Croatia.

No top-down guidelines have been developed in Romania with recommendations or large-scale initiatives on the inclusion of cultural activities outside the curriculum, but within the school day (e.g. in school breaks), or in extracurricular cultural activities in schools.

Non-formal learning and youth work

Since 2016 the Administration of the National Cultural Fund is funding projects for „Education through culture”. However, data are not available regarding the total number of participants to all the projects funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, as the monitoring data or a general programme evaluation are not structured in a publicly available document.

Specialised training for professionals in the education, culture and youth fields

The calendar of activities of cultural institutions shows their focus is on the training of young creators and professionals in the culture fields, and less on the training of teachers or youth worker for using culture in their activities. Among the few exceptions are the Madrigal Choir programme, Cantus Mundi and the international projects of the "George Apostu" Cultural Centre in Bacau.

The Madrigal Choir programme, Cantus Mundi, includes two components, one for social inclusion and one for training of professionals in the education, especially music teachers. The program includes country-wide training workshops for teachers who are keen to learn and perfect in the field of coral guidance. It also includes special events such as gala concerts and festivals with and for young people.

For young creators, the Administration of the National Cultural Fund is funding every year projects within two calls for 'Creative residences'. However, data are not available regarding the total number of participants to all the projects funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, as the monitoring data or a general programme evaluation have not been conducted or published.

On the other hand, most of the cultural institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Culture and National Identity implement cultural mobility/residency projects, supporting young artists to learn and create with pears and/or experienced professionals in the cultural fields. Institutions implementing the cultural mobility/residency projects are:

• The "George Apostu” Cultural Centre in Bacau implements from 2005 the artistic residences project 'Artist(N)est', continued since 2013 by the project 'E-Motional: rethinking dance'. Both projects had international funding from the Swiss government (Swiss Cultural Program for South-Eastern Europe and Ukraine Pro Helvetia) or the European programme: Culture;
• The "George Enescu” National Museum (Bucharest) organises artistical residences for young composers, performers, plastic artists and choreographers, offers scholarships and organises trainings and recitals of young graduates, master students etc. in the museum;
• The National Dance Centre (Bucharest) offers residences and other learning opportunities to young artists;
• The Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj and the "Mihai Eminescu" National Theatre (Timisoara) organise activities for young actors with a specific learning objective.

Another national initiative for young creators is the organisation of creation camps. The National Cultural Program for the Financial Support of National and International plastic creation camps supports the production of cultural goods in national or international events organised in Romania for professional artists. The programme is granting contracts for the organisation of a specific creation camp to NGOs or cultural enterprises.

On the other hand, the cultural institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Culture implement tradition projects organising creation camps. For instance, the National Museum of History of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca) organised in 2016: (1) the annual camp at the archaeological site of Țaga (Cluj county) for students and high school pupils and (2) The International Archeology Camp at Dacia Sarmizegetusa Colony, organised within the project From Theory To Practice - International Teaching in Field Archeology in Roman Sarmizegetusa, funded by the EU through KA2 of the Erasmus+ Programme.

Providing quality access to creative environments

No information have been available for the National Correspondent on policy, programme, project or initiative conducted by top-level authorities for widening the access of young people to creative environments.