The Association of Professional Theatres in the Czech Republic is an organization of employers in the field of professional public service theatres and deals with issues of common interest. Theaters have been facing growing bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of funding stability for decades. The covid crisis has once again highlighted the need for changes in live performance sector legislation and the need for coordinated communication with ministries and public administrative bodies. Requirements for the provision of consulting, service and mediation services are increasing on the part of member theaters. Related to this is the need to increase the personnel capacity of the Association. Unlike comparable associations abroad that have entire teams, the Association has no full-time employees.
We would like to use the funds from the grant to create a permanent job position and thus provide stable security for long-term employees. The Association has long provided legal and tax advice to members, prepared methodologies, common positions and their communication for them, and strives to improve conditions in the cultural sector. Greater staff capacity will allow these services to expand, increase in volume and improve. It is necessary to map members of the Association to identify the diverse needs of individual theaters. The resulting data will argumentatively help in communicating the interests of the Association to public administrative bodies. They will also be a stepping stone in the preparation of other activities for our members. As part of the project, we want to further strengthen the competencies of our members through workshops, seminars and internships.
In preparing these workshops, we will draw on the experience of our partner Association of Norwegian Theaters and Orchestras. At the same time, we want to be inspired by their functioning in optimizing our processes, how to fully utilize the personnel capacities and gradually increase them.