THE PARTNERSHIP IS CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW AND A CALL FOR APPLICATIONS HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO NEXT YEAR, 2007. THEREFORE THE DEPARTMENT IS NOT ACCEPTING ANY NEW APPLICATIONS IN THIS REGARD.

The Partnership Programme was established in 2004 with a view to promote cultural exchange between South Africa and Sweden (A detailed background is attached). The aim is to support and strengthen co-operation between institutions, organisations and cultural groups in both countries. The South African Department for Arts and Culture, Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs are jointly administering the partnership programme.

The main goal of The Swedish/South African Culture Partnership Programme is to contribute to an environment supportive of poor people’s own efforts to improve their quality of life. This includes among other things to promote freedom of access to information, freedom of expression as well as capacity building by encourage cultural co-operation between South Africa and Sweden.

The Department of Arts and Culture contributes R12 million and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) contributes 45 million SEK (R38 135 593) over a period of three years from 2004 to 2006. The total contribution in Rands is approximately R50 135 593. The Department of Arts and Culture has set aside R4 million to be allocated for 2006.

Funds can be applied for projects not exceeding three years of project time. When assessing applications, capacity building through skills transfer and long-term sustainability of projects are considered as very important as well as the relevance of the project in relation to objectives and criteria of the Culture Partnership Programme.

Current Status

After two calls that ware made on the 31 April 2005 and 15 October 2005 respectively for 3rd round of funding, applications were received from various arts institutions and the consolidated number of applications received by DAC and NCCA is 135 where DAC received 82 and NCCA received 53. The applications varied according to different arts genre and of the 60 projects that had partners, 10 of those were submitted in South Africa. Furthermore, DAC received 86 requests for partner applications from SA organizations whereas only one was received from Sweden looking for a partner.

The Joint Committee meeting was convened in South Africa, Pretoria in February 2006 to assess all projects received from different arts and culture organisations. The Department of Arts and Culture together with Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs will make a final decision on recommendations that were made by the Joint Committee members.

For more information on the above programme you can contact the project managers.