Reform of the Ministry of Culture in the field of cultural heritage

Cultural, material and immaterial heritage is a national asset, that although the state has the direct responsibility to preserve, protect and promote it, being the asset of the whole nation means that we all have the duty to take care of it, love it, recognize it, protect it and promote it.

The Ministry exercises this responsibility through its local structures in the field, regional directorates, parks administration offices and museum directorates, which in cooperation with specialized institutions under the Ministry of Culture such as IMK, ASHA, QKIPK and QKVF take care of the protection, maintenance, good administration and promotion of material and non-material cultural heritage.

The day-to-day care of the monument has long been abandoned. The vegetation that invades the monument has taken the place of the careful hand that should clean them. Communication with people is extinguished. Relations with the local government were absent at best, but often almost clannish to non-hostile. No one cared about the monument. Without talking here about the extraordinary damages that have been done with constructions without criteria, with vandalism in historical centers, with massacre interventions in monuments, with the abandonment of traditional dwellings without looking back, with the order after the profit of the day and the corruption of the decision-making and permitting structures . Cause or effect of the above, the worst, the professional level of local heritage administrators dropped to the lowest quotas.

It is never too late to intervene, to stop, to think not only how to stop this situation, to save it, but also how to do our common task better. However, this is not easy, but not impossible.

No matter how rich a country is, it cannot ALONE afford monuments with restorations, which in any case burden the budget, and the more this cost becomes for a country like Albania which list of priorities and emergencies is not small.

From the beginning of work, Ministry of Culture and its specialized Institutions have started a series of field inspections, not only to see and understand the physical situation, the concrete condition, the location of the monuments, but especially also to recognize the human capacities that work in the field, their abilities or disabilities, their relations with the community, with schools, with local government, with local business, the shortcomings of the regulations of historical centers and parks, challenges, difficulties, to discuss their overcoming. Among other things, it was this familiarity with the terrain, the people and the problems that provided the basis for the beginning of the reform in Inheritance.

In this context, the strategic steps taken by MK are:

1. Extending the network of local DRKK administrators to as many points of the territory as possible to cover it as well as possible; to be as close as possible to monuments and cultural values and the communities that live near, enjoy and carry these cultural values; In addition to the geographical coverage, the professional treatment of the problems that arise during the daily maintenance of monuments and cultural values has been a concern that finds a solution through the internal profiling of the DRKK structures; this was the goal of the structural reform of the administrative system of TK;

2. Personnel recruitment by competition on the basis of new professional profiles. This contest continues every day, which means:

• that professional performance is and will be a daily object of evaluation and measurement of the competences, commitment and dedication of everyone.
• that the work that has started successfully for the identification, inventory, cleaning of monuments and the promotion of intangible cultural values is the daily work of the DRKK.
• that no one is eternal in those positions.

3. Capacity improvement through continuous training and qualification of DRKK personnel in the field of Heritage administration is already a well-organized and undivided program of the work of MK in the center and in the field.

4. Establishing intensive communication between the DRKK and the specialized institutions of the Ministry of Culture (IMK, ASHA, QKIPK, QKVF) for the best possible coordination well professional and institutional work – missing communication that is giving its results day by day, has been one of the first priorities of the new Ministry of Culture.

5. Building and maintaining relations with the local government, municipality and municipality, without which it is impossible to preserve and protect the cultural heritage – necessity and our commitment daily.

6. Intensive cooperation with local associations and business to support an asset from which all benefit and which all enjoy, therefore everyone must contribute – we are proud that the first results of this cooperation have gone very well. For its part, MK, through a very transparent process, has supported and continues to support 22 projects presented by institutions and associations in the field of cultural heritage in the First Call for Projects of MK.

7. Collaboration and lobbying with all current and potential donors to raise funds for maintenance, restoration, but also for living in the service of sustainable development. The results of this cooperation have not been delayed:

• project for the construction of Marubi Museum with IPA funds and in cooperation with ADF;
• musealization and the soon opening of the Archaeological Museum of Durres, closed for more than 4 years, in cooperation with Intesa San Paolo Bank, with the Municipality of Durres and thanks to the dedicated work of the experts of the TK system;
• restoration of the Church of St. Mary and the Restaurant in Apolloni as well as the reorganization of the visiting itineraries of the park;
• restoration of the most endangered churches in cooperation with the restoration center of the Orthodox Church, including the Church of Saint Spyridon in Vuno, whose roof collapsed due to long abandonment;
• the restoration of the fresco of Valshi Church, damaged and stolen by unidentified criminals two years ago, will be restored thanks to the cooperation with the IPA funds and the institutions that manage them;
• restoration of the Gorica Bridge in Berat (WHS) in cooperation with ADF;
• the project for the restoration of the Gjirokastra Castle in cooperation with the Turkish Agency TIKA;
• pilot project for the lighting of a part of the historical center in Gjirokastra (WHS)
• the opening of the ethnography pavilion in MHK soon thanks to the cooperation with UNDP;
• Creation of the Virtual Museum of Marubi in collaboration with UNDP and Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia;

etc.

8. An important and necessary component of the heritage reform is the legal reform, work that has already started for several months by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage in cooperation with interest groups and experts in the field.

9. AND, ABOVE ALL: sensitization, awareness and education of the population with love for cultural heritage, with daily care for the monument and cultural value! This means activity and daily work with schools, with residents, with young people, with local authorities. They should be part of the cultural actions, they should live the monuments as a space where they live and not as an insensitive decoration. All initiatives, such as the one of the MK for the creation of the “Friends of the Monument”, and the initiatives that serve this education will have the primary support of the Ministry of Culture and will be part of the government program “Education through Culture”.