On April 17, the mayor of Zrenjanin, Simo Salapura, canceled the competition for the co-financing of programs of public interest that were supposed to be implemented within the project. "Zrenjanin - Capital of Culture of Serbia 2025", the portal announced Zrenjanin.com.
As it is written in the explanation, the competition within the project "Zrenjanin - the capital of culture of Serbia" is canceled because there are no funds provided for those purposes in the city budget.
30 million
The competition was announced on December 17 last year. The mayor then invited associations and organizations, endowments and foundations, and all those interested to respond to the invitation to participate in the official program of the project and in this way contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the competition, which are to raise the quality of the program of the Capital of Culture of Serbia, the promotion of the cultural and touristic offer of the City of Zrenjanin, the development of the audience, as well as the development of the civil sector in culture.
As stated at the time, the amount of funds planned for the competition amounted to 30 million dinars.
Why that money is not there is unknown.
The mayor, nor anyone from the Zrenjanin City Assembly, has not announced whether this means that Zrenjanin is no longer the Capital of Culture, and if so, what programs it will be able to implement.
What has been achieved?
By the way, of the announced PK programs, so far only two premieres have been played at the "Toša Jovanović" Theater. They were the puppet show "Andraci, Jepuri and the other most important monsters of Petrovgrad and the middle Banat", which marked the beginning of the year of culture in Zrenjanin, and "Đuka". Both are part of the regular annual plan of this theater, and were not prepared specifically for PK.
Already in the first week of the year of culture: the Choir Festival was cancelled, a heirs of the work of Isidore Žebeljan they refused to let her name and works be used during PK.
And everything is beautifully thought out.
And a lot is planned. In March last year, the then Minister of Culture, Maja Gojković, announced that around 100 cultural programs were planned, of which as many as 50 were completely newly created for the Capital of Culture in 2025.
"The project also foresees ten infrastructure projects, as well as the complete reconstruction, renovation and adaptation of the Town Hall, a historic building that will shine in its full glory in a year and will be handed over for use to all the citizens of Zrenjanin with pride," emphasized Gojković.
She specified that the Ministry of Culture has earmarked "a total of about 300 million dinars" for the implementation of the PK project.
At the moment, it is not possible to find out whether the Ministry of Culture fulfilled its obligation and paid Zrenjanin the agreed amount (120 million last year and the rest of this year).
Given that the city that will bear the title of Capital of Culture of Serbia is appointed by the Ministry of Culture, it should probably also announce whether Zrenjanin will continue to be the Capital of Culture of Serbia until March 21 next year or not.
Before Zrenjanin, that title was held by Čačak and Užice.
