Tarand says decision-makers no longer gauge cultural sector

Decision-makers have stopped trying to understand conditions and sentiment in the cultural sector, while cultural workers fall further behind each year, Sirp editor-in-chief Kaarel Tarand said in an interview with ERR.

Tarand said the weekly newspaper, published by the Kultuurileht Foundation, has a small staff and a demanding production schedule. Editors spend Monday to Wednesday preparing each issue for print, often under time pressure and in coordination with a wide range of contributors. The paper goes to print on Thursday, bringing a sense of relief, he said.

Sirp publishes work by several hundred people each year, including writers from different generations and fields, from the arts and sciences to social commentary. Much of its coverage responds to events in cultural and public life. Some require a quick response, while books and long-running theatre productions allow more time, Tarand said.

He described Sirp not simply as a cultural newspaper but as a publication for Estonia’s intellectual community and a forum for exchanging ideas. Its audience includes about 200,000 people who take part in cultural and intellectual life, such as museum, theatre, cinema and concert visitors and readers. Tarand said the paper does not try to reach many others who are outside that sphere and mainstream media.

The Kultuurileht Foundation’s 15 publications are in a poor financial position, Tarand said, as are other organisations in the cultural sector and under the Ministry of Culture. He said the cultural sector’s share of the state budget has fallen over 20 years from about 4% of the budget available to the ministry to possibly just over 1.5% next year.

Tarand said the declining share was also at odds with strategy documents approved by the government and parliament.