TIRANA, April 5 – Albania has yet to define its originality and what the country is standing for in the concert of nations, a Council of Europe-commissioned report says as Albania is drafting a new cultural strategy.
“Quality tourism requires a different unique experience for a place to be distinctive and generate different types of services and experiences. Albania should characterize its cultural offer to highlight the uniqueness of the place and its people,” says the report.
Albania has dozens of cultural heritage sites dating back from ancient Illyria, Albania’s predecessor and a mix of ancient Roman, Greek and Ottoman civilizations. Three sites, the cities of Gjirokastra, Berat and the Butrint archaeological park have been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage site. Albanian iso-polyphony, a sophisticated form of group singing performed mostly by men in southern Albania, is also recognized by UNESCO as Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
“Importantly, there is the opportunity for the Ministry of Culture to help define what makes Albania unique and therefore contribute in setting a narrative that includes culture as the main factor that characterizes the country. This important work will help raise awareness on the importance of culture in societal development and put the Culture Ministry in a position to be a resource for authorities to manage Albania as a territory of destination considering the priority given to tourism,” says the Council of Europe-commissioned report.
Philippe Kern, an expert from Brussels-based consultancy firm who drafted the report, says the culture strategy is also about supporting the development of narrative that highlights the country’s cultural specificities and how its cultural resources contribute to diversity.
“The challenge is to make use of the country’s past, cultural, political and religious assets to build a future that is inclusive, and serves as an example to neighbouring countries whether in the Balkans or across the Mediterranean,” he says.
Another challenge relates to the positioning of the government and Albanian municipalities on promoting the emergence of a creative economy largely stemming from cultural and artistic education and practices.
“Few local policy makers seem to be aware of the potential of culture for economic and social development. It is important to raise awareness on the potential of culture and creative industries in local context. This will help mobilise important resources to monitor implementation of heritage policy for instance (protection of sites) but also to raise funding alongside the State budget,” says the strategy.
The report suggests the cultural policy strategy should be developed with a view to access EU funding considering that Albania has only managed to attract a modest €855,000 to heritage projects in Apolonia, Butrint and Lezha so far.
“One of the main challenges in relation to cultural policy is to modernize the cultural institutions by adapting them to function under a market economy, with new forms of cultural consumptions, budgetary constraints, the need to internationalize and network as well as to mobilize alternative sources of funding (investors in Albania have yet to be mobilised to support art and culture). The appetite for cultural investment and cultural consumption is to be strengthened and regulation should make investment in the cultural sector by private investors as attractive as possible,” says the report.
In its newly proposed bill on cultural heritage and museums, the government can also sign public private partnerships on the management and revitalization of heritage sites, something that has triggered concern among heritage experts.
Albania’s Culture Ministry has a small budget of €13 million representing less than 0.3 percent of the national budget and an administration with 90 members of staff, probably the leanest cultural administration in Europe, says the report.
Albania had some 670,000 visitors, a considerable part of whom foreigners, to museums, castles and monuments as well as archaeological parks in 2017, according to state statistical institute, INSTAT.
Albanian authorities have also drafted a new five-year strategy on tourism with the goal of turning the emerging sector into a key driver of sustainable development that can employ one out of three people by 2027.
However, the Albanian Tour Operators Association, one of the key market stakeholders, argues the tourism sector cannot develop without standards and a clear and concrete vision.
Closed to tourists for about five decades until the early 1990s, Albania offers a miscellaneous picture of coastal and mountain tourism and cultural heritage.
The communist past is what fascinates most tourists about Albania, which was cut off from the rest of the world under a Stalinist dictatorship for about five decades until the early 1990s.
The House of Leaves museum of the notorious Sigurimi police surveillance in downtown Tirana, a Cold War bunker outside the capital city that the former communist regime had built underground decades ago to survive a possible nuclear attack and the Sazan Island military base south of the country all house the mystery and phobia of the country’s communist leaders for about five decades until the early 1990s.
