“Corona has dealt a huge blow to culture, but to the question of whether culture is dead, the answer is a resounding no. We faced many problems, one of the main ones being the pandemic and the corona in the culture. We stumbled upon unrealized projects, they have been stopped since March, fortunately I can say that despite the change of the Government and the ministers, the artists and the national institutions used the summer and the open space very well and organized many events and covered part of the program”, said Jasmina Nikuljska from the Ministry of culture of the panel discussion “Society in a pandemic, performing arts on the brink of survival” organized by CIVIL.

“Many events were organized in the summer with large investments, such as the Ohrid Summer, Struga Poetry Evenings, Cinedays, the Skopje Jazz Festival, with great efforts realized part of the program, to gather an audience.

All this was the realization of a part of the program from which the ministry had given funds, many of the projects were not realized, because we did not have protocols for holding events indoors.

During the summer, the institutions opened YouTube channels to enliven the people and show them that the culture is still alive.

With those projects that did not manage to make either a closed premiere or a partially open one, the funds were reallocated for material costs of those institutions, due to the impossibility to realize these events with the audience, we managed to level out to some extent that awkward situation in which they found themselves.

In all countries throughout history, when they were in crises, pandemics, plagues, cultural figures were the ones who emerged as phoenixes, created and managed to maintain the spirit of the people,” said Nikuljska.