Name of your organisation: Arts Council of Mongolia
Website of your organisation: www.artscouncil.mn
How is your organisation funded?
By June 2007, ACM had raised $978,826 since its establishment in cash and 27.5% of this amount is the OSI-ACNP grants.
ACM constantly increases fundraising through its annual fund, through accelerated and carefully targeted grant proposals to international foundations, increased collaboration with NGO and governments doing business in Mongolia and increasing earned revenues. Fundraising is and will remain the highest priority of ACM. The ACM fundraising strategy will keep focusing in four major lines of action: International fundraising, targets international donor organizations and foundations with clear and appropriate project proposals. Collaborative Fundraising, target the Mongolian government, NGOs and other organizations currently working in Mongolia, Annual Membership Campaign, targets both corporate and individual donors and encourages long term and continued support of ACM. Individual Fundraising, targets individual donors through the and merchandise purchases.
Explain what your organisation is about (to somebody who does not know about it).
In 2007, the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM) is entering the fifth year of its operations. The ACM strategies are the program and operational guides that assist the ACM in fulfilling its mission of supporting the sustainable development of Mongolian arts and culture and preservation of cultural heritage.
The ACM has established the strong and visible governance structure, expanded its geography of cultural partnership to form international ties with similar organizations in Central Asia, USA, South East Asia, Japan and Korea and has achieved significant program and fundraising successes. The significant highlight and acknowledgement of ACM’s visibility in Asia will be the fifth Asian Chapter Meeting of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA), the well known worldwide network of state, public and private arts organizations, to be hosted by ACM’ in Ulaanbaatar in July 2007.
The main mission of ACM is to promote and advocate for the sustainable development of Mongolian arts and culture, acknowledging and advocating that cultural life is important in the development of a free, open and economically vital society. We work toward this vision for Mongolia in four different program areas: Grants, Arts Education, Cultural Heritage and Advocacy.
Describe how your organisation is engaged in international cooperation and exchange.
One of ACM’s priorities is to build international networks and collaborative projects to foster mutual understanding, cultural dialogue and exchange worldwide through its program areas including advocacy, arts education, grants and cultural heritage. The Asian Chapter meeting of the International Federation of Arts Council and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA) hosted by ACM in July, 2007 will greatly contribute to this objective and will greatly increase visibility of Mongolia and ACM among Asia and worldwide. Same time, ACM will continue to contribute to building a nation-wide advocacy network of arts organizations to identify and prioritize their needs and having knowledgeable and experienced leadership and tools to be able to articulate the importance of the arts. For this objective, it is essential for ACM and Mongolian cultural community to learn from the best international experiences on advocating and formulating better cultural policies.
Describe how your art space relates to the local community. If you are about to open an art space, explain how you related to the local community in your previous experiences.
Starting from 2003 ACM engaged in administering and running open space for artistic creativity. In this case, there are great potential to contribute arts and cultural sector with open and accessible space for artistic creativity and community development. ACM launched the Red Ger Art Gallery in June, 2003. Now the Red Ger Arts Gallery continues its activity through organizing different art events, exhibitions, receptions and trainings and be an entry point into ACM activities for the community. Also in 2008 ACM is planning to launch the Red Ger School of Creativity at the Red Ger Gallery space for winter time in order to develop an open space to promote arts education as an vehicle to build open, creative and knowledge based societies through digital art trainings. In 2007 ACM developed a new project Nomadic Arts Residency program to develop and create nomadic international arts residency program to foster local and international mobility of artist and to provide them space to create their art works.
What are the major internal and external challenges your organisation is facing?
Like many transition countries with limited resources and philanthropic traditions to support its arts and cultural heritage, the obstacles facing artists and arts organizations in Mongolia are many. Currently there are more than 5000 people working in Mongolia’s cultural sector, employed by 28 national and 12 private professional arts organizations (theaters, ensembles, circuses and orchestras), 48 museums (including 9 national museums, 30 local museums and 9 branch museums) and more than 50 NGOs dealing with arts and cultural development. Since 1990, several actions to formulate national policy on cultural development have taken place. The “National Policy on Culture” was ratified by the Parliament of Mongolia in April 1996, a policy that promotes the significant role of culture in establishing and developing a humane society in Mongolia, and defines Mongolian culture as “a guarantee of independence and safety, a source of national pride and unity and an important lever for development and progress.” This document defines the basic areas of Mongolia’s cultural policy as “safeguarding the nomadic culture while developing it in proper combination with sedentary culture, creating immunities against the eventual loss of Mongolian culture over the course of time, and honoring the national culture and supporting its development by all means possible.”
Although the national agenda on cultural development has been formulated and implementation of it taken place, the arts and culture sector of Mongolia is still facing the following main obstacles:
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Lack of national vision on cultural development
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Centralised administrative and financial management
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Unfavourable taxation and legal structures for corporate donation towards arts and culture
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Weak partnerships and collaboration on an national and international level
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Low human resources and competitive capacity
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Limited financial ability in investing in arts and cultural facilities and infrastructures
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Lack of awareness amongst policy makers and the general public about the importance of arts and culture in personal, social and economic development
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Endangered cultural heritage
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Lack of creativeness among youth and children
At the same time, there are very limited international resources to support Mongolian arts and cultural development despite the good support provided by UNESCO and the Governments of Japan, China, German, China and Turkey. Their funding principally contributed to the preservation and conservation of cultural sites, conducting archeological expeditions and building spaces and supplying infrastructures to cultural organizations.
What are the main achievements and strengths of your organisation?
In 2002-2006, the ACM grants program was supporting 85 arts organizations and 48 individuals in carrying out their artistic initiatives. ACM provided a total of $207,815 to artists and organizations to create, sustain and preserve cultural development in this transition society and ensuring that new ideas and skills were gained and shared openly. The important impacts of the ACM grants program were: increased global mobility; art administration & leadership skills in artists and organizations and increased knowledge, experience and awareness about the importance of arts education among Mongolia’s cultural community.
An important feature of the ACM’s activities is its Arts Education program which aimed at promoting critical thinking, creativeness, life skills development and increased access to the creative process for young Mongolians, including vulnerable children and youth. A total of 14 arts education projects were initiated and implemented, involving more than 6000 children and dozens of artists and arts educators, who were trained in child-centered art education methodologies. Several Arts Education program highlights include the “I can do It” project for disabled children, the “Focus on Kids”- photography projects for disadvantaged children, “My history and my culture” 37 TV series and the “Rainbow Horses” community arts education project. ACM’s Cultural Heritage program was newly established in 2005 and successful initiatives have already taken place in three museums in the Gobi region that have strengthened the capacity of these museums in maintaining their collections. The first of its kind commercial tour of the performing arts group “Tumen Ekh” to North America in May 2006 was organized with support from ACM-US and brought increased visibility and earned income to both ACM and “Tumen Ekh”. Another highlight of ACM’s Cultural Heritage program is the “Monastery Mapping” project, successfully taking place in 2007, which is collecting data and oral histories about Mongolian monasteries and temples that existed before the communist purge in 1937. The President of Mongolia and his office have expressed their interest in cooperating on this initiative. The focus of ACM’s Advocacy program was to advocate for improved cultural policies and legal structures that favor cultural development and to build partnerships with government and international organizations in order to support Mongolian arts and culture. For the last 5 years, ACM’s Advocacy program has hosted two international forums that addressed issues of cultural policy & financing and cultural tourism and conducted the related policy surveys. In order to increase the participation of the cultural community in legislation process ACM in partnership with the Ministry of Education Science & Culture, the Open Society Forum, Democracy Education Center facilitated a series of public discussions and advocacy activities on emerging cultural development issues including law on culture, and taxation and NGO’s. Also the Program played a role in building the arts advocacy and cultural policy research capacities among cultural operators and arts university scholars.
