At its October session the City Council of the City of Ljubljana has unanimously adopted the Culture Development Strategy in the City of Ljubljana for the period 2020-2023 with guidelines up to 2027.

The Culture Development Strategy, already the fourth in sequence, addresses the key challenges facing the society.

We started preparing the strategy in cooperation with public institutes, non-governmental organisations and individuals prior to the coronavirus outbreak and finished it when this new realty has already strongly affected the cultural sector. In addition to general priority tasks and aims, the document includes a chapter on culture during the times of crisis. Its preparation has also been strongly marked by Ljubljana’s candidacy for the title European Capital of Culture 2025.

The new cultural strategy includes a number of novelties with regard to contents, which conceptually entails an establishment of a new paradigm of the cultural policy of the City of Ljubljana. It is derived from a conclusion, that cultural policy is truly progressive when it is capable to adapt itself and address the challenges of the cultural and creative sector as well as the whole society.

Among the novelties in contents, which we are introducing in the area of culture until the end of 2023 in line with the strategy, we are highlighting the following:

• stronger international orientation aimed at stronger placement of Ljubljana as a globally recognisable city offering its citizens and all visitors cultural and artistic programmes at the highest level of quality,
• stronger cultural cooperation with municipalities within the Ljubljana Urban Region with the aim of creating new audiences, a new regional cultural identity, permanent connections between cultural producers and mobility of artists,
• broadened network of artistic residences for national and foreign artists,
• support for participative cultural projects and programmes strengthening social cohesion and inclusion of members of vulnerable groups into the social life,
• support for community projects proposed by the residents of the City of Ljubljana with the aim of improving the quality of life in their local environments,
• establishment of a system enabling the inclusion of the so called »artistic share« in investment projects of the City of Ljubljana.