Home » News » A working group to develop Liepāja Theater development scenarios should meet for the first meeting this month | The news

A working group to develop Liepāja Theater development scenarios should meet for the first meeting this month | The news


Riga, October 8, LETA. A working group that will develop scenarios for the future development of the Liepāja Theater will have to meet for the first meeting by October 23, Inga Vasiljeva, Adviser to the Minister of Culture, informed LETA.

Last Friday, the Minister of Culture Nauris Puntulis (NA) announced plans to form a working group, which will also have to develop models for the legal ownership and financing of the theater.

The working group, whose task will be to look at this issue in a broader context – the need to develop long-term solutions for cooperation between the state and local governments in financing and operating professional theaters of national significance, representatives of the Cultural Capital Fund and the Theater Advisory Council, the Minister’s Adviser previously indicated to LETA.

LETA has already announced that today in the Finance Committee of Liepāja City Council will decide on the allocation of 244,000 euros to Liepāja Theater so that it can cover the losses incurred during the state of emergency declared in the country.

As Daiga Kļaviņa, Adviser to the Chairman of the Liepāja City Council on Public Relations, told LETA, yesterday the Chairman of the Liepāja City Council Jānis Vilnītis (LRA) had a short meeting with the Minister of Culture to discuss the establishment of a working group to organize professional theater work in the regions.

Kļaviņa pointed out that the working group will also include representatives of local governments, but its composition and tasks will be determined by the Ministry of Culture (MoC).

Taking into account that the state will not provide financial support to compensate for the financial losses caused to the Liepāja Theater Covid-19, as the theater is a municipal capital company, Liepāja City Council has prepared amendments to the municipal budget for 2020, providing 200,000 euros to compensate for unspecified theater tickets, explained Klavina.

She added that the amount of tickets not initially sold to the theater reached 92,000 euros, but after a financially successful operation in September, the theater is ready to cover 48,000 euros from its revenues.

Amendments to this year’s budget of Liepaja city are planned to be approved at the council meeting, which will take place next week.

LETA has already announced that if the Liepāja Theater does not receive financial support to eliminate the consequences of the Covid-19 crisis, it may have to suspend its operation already in October. Liepāja Theater is a municipal capital company, therefore it did not receive financial support from the government to eliminate the consequences of the crisis caused by Covid-19.

In talks with the Ministry of Culture, Liepāja City Council and the theater repeatedly pointed out that the state cannot directly help the theater owned by the municipality, but indirectly funding could be obtained through the SCCF project competition, previously said Liepāja City Council Chairman Vilnītis. of these projects, the maximum possible funding would be up to € 30,000. Project evaluation will take place in September, so funding would already be available in the autumn.

In the negotiations between the Ministry of Culture and the municipality on the future of Liepāja Theater, discussions have also been started on the fact that the municipality would hand over the theater to the Ministry of Culture, as it was before the 2009 economic crisis in Latvia.

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