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Closing conference
on program “Serbia and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers” for 2015
December 21,
2015
The closing
conference on the results of the
program “Serbia and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers” for a
year 2015 was held on December 21,
2015 in the Human Rights House in
Belgrade. The conference is
organized by the Helsinki Committee
for Human Rights in Serbia and the
Liberal Democratic Centre from
Pristina. The pogram is realized
with the assistance from the
European Union under the Support to
Civil Society Facility 2013 Program.
The Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
and the Liberal Democratic Centre
from Pristina have launched the
project “Serbia and Kosovo:
Intercultural Icebreakers” in 2015.
The project aims at renewing old
ties and creating new ones among
young people, academic and artistic
circles, media outlets and civil
society organizations from Belgrade
and Pristina, thus contributing to
dialogue, reconciliation and
normalization between the two
countries.
Program
coordinator Jelena Dzombic gave an
overview of the main activities in
the field of cultural and artistic
cooperation between Kosovo and
Serbia in 2015 which were conducted
by the Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights and other organizations from
Serbia and Kosovo. The main
challenges faced while carrying out
of this program were how to motivate
young artists to participate in the
seminars together with their
Serbian/Kosovar peers; how to find
and secure locations where cultural
events took place; how to motivate
residents of Belgrade and Pristina
to attend these events; and how to
motivate the media to cover all of
these events.
Kosovo liaison
officer in Belgrade Valdet Sadiku
emphasized that he is very pleased
with the exchange and joint programs
between Kosovo and Serbia, whose
number is continually increasing.
“It is pity that in the Internet age
with its innumerable means of
communication there is little
information about Pristina in
Belgrade and vice versa. The best
part of my job is supporting such
projects and activities as well as
simply knowing that they exist. I
have participated in almost all
activities of the Helsinki Committee
for Human rights and I believe that
this year cultural cooperation
between Belgrade and Pristina was
qualitatively better than in
previous years. The Berlin process
creates additional opportunities for
cooperation between young people and
the both parties’ governments should
support increased participation of
young people in such projects.
Moreover, they should get engaged in
other spheres that until recently
were closed for them. Of course,
non-governmental cooperation have
existed before the Brussels
Agreement and NGOs were not waiting
for these agreements to be signed,
but now there is an opportunity for
the engagement of the increased
number of NGOs. I strongly believe
in this process, we have no other
alternative but to attempt to find a
way to take a step forward”, said
Sadiku.
Movie director and
project partner from the Liberal
Democratic Centre from Pristina
Birol Urcan provided an overlook of
the current Kosovo’s cultural and
artistic scenes and shared his
impressions about the program:
“While organizing the festival ‘A
Month of Belgrade in Pristina’ we
were attempting to find locations
where the events would take place,
though we were not expecting some
problems. For instance, the concerts
went smoothly, in the same way any
other concerts in Pristina did,
which was a good sign. Concerts and
exhibitions had extensive coverage
in the media. I hope that the
cooperation will continue in new
forms,” emphasized Urcan.
Based on his work
with young people at the seminars,
writer Sasa Ilic concluded that
young people in Serbia are
well-educated but constrained by the
local politics and that they know
little about Kosovo. “On the one
hand, the agreements were signed and
chapter 35 was opened; on the other
hand, prejudices about Kosovo remain
strong in the Serbian society. An
event of great importance took place
in 2015, which is the cooperation of
such institutions as National
Theatre in Belgrade and National
Theatre in Pristina. It is the first
time when cooperation was initiated
by institutions other than civil
society, and I advocated this
cooperation despite numerous
difficulties. Up till now many books
were translated from Albanian to
Serbian and vice versa, performances
are put on, etc. However, we should
also engage institutions and
educational establishments for our
efforts not to end up dispersed in
the media, but to contribute to the
real breakout of stereotypes through
festivals, such as POLIP for
example. The interesting thing is
that Kosovo officials are present at
today’s conference, which cannot be
said about their Serbian
counterparts. They should contribute
to the process of normalization and
cooperation and support the
painstaking achievements of the
civil society”, said Sasa Ilic.
Lola Joksimovic
also touched upon cultural policy
and announced the theater
performance “The Encyclopedia of the
Living” by the Belgrade Centre for
Cultural Decontamination and Qendra
Multimedie Centre from Pristina. “It
is necessary to develop the open
dialogue, the young are not obliged
to share other people the views. One
American artist said: “Art is what
the others are doing to us, while
culture is what we are doing to the
others”. Civil society should put
pressure on politicians and a strong
society should not fear strong
fringe groups. Cultural policy must
be clearly defined, because if that
was the case, the cooperation with
Kosovo would be more lasting and
would not be conceived as a random
project”.
At the conference
it was announced that this program
is to be continued in 2016. New
activities and further cooperation
with young artists are starting in
January 2016; however, this time
they would also imply the
cooperation of educational
institutions, such as universities
in Belgrade and Pristina. It was
concluded that the number of
relevant activities should be
increased, that more young artists
from Belgrade should visit Pristina
and vice versa, that cultural
institutions should organize such
events so that artists from Pristina
could become a part of Belgrade’s
cultural scene and vice versa. All
projects mentioned above are still
pushed forward primarily by the
NGOs, so our objective is to make
Kosovo cultural events and visits of
local artists an essential part of
Belgrade’s cultural scene, as well
as to make artists and cultural
workers from Belgrade present at
Kosovo’s cultural scene.
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