Culture Hub Croatia (CHC) is a non-profit organisation officially founded in January 2017 in Split. CHC is using education, culture and creativity for development of local communities through transmission of knowledge and expertise and promotion of art practices. This is mainly achieved through establishing meaningful partnerships and collaborations at the national and international levels, actively addressing local challenges and using arts and culture as a tool.
Through our physical creative hub PROSTOR in Split, our mission is to create an inclusive place for networking of creatives, initiate and facilitate development and implementation of projects of social interest, nurturing the value of transparency and mutual trust, with frequent experimentation going beyond traditional ways of doing things and often questioning established social norms. PROSTOR is made for and shaped by the community through the annual open call for “adopting the space” and the role of members-collaborators who actively engage in the work of the Association, its governing bodies and decision-making.
Through listening to the needs of the community, designing creative and innovative educational programs and continuous exhibition activity emphasising participation including complementary discursive programs, CHC's mission is also to empower and build the capacity of artists and workers in the cultural and creative sector, to encourage and promote creativity, contemporary art and intercultural dialogue but also to involve different types of audiences and general public in actively shaping their neighbourhoods and environments.
[Meet the team]
SUPERVISORY BOARD: Ivan Jurić, Andrea Resner, Maja Feher
FROM THE MEDIA:
[Activity reports]
[Operational and financial plans]
Stil-Slobodna Dalmacija
STATEMENT (JULY 2021) A new space is like an empty canvas. It can become anything for anyone. We have been working on that canvas for more than 4 years, in our minds and experimentations in various urban, public and private spaces, in Split and beyond. We established CHC (Culture Hub Croatia) in 2017 with the mission to use education, culture and creativity for development of local communities through transmission of knowledge and European expertise and through promotion of art practices. A long-term vision from the start was to establish a physical space, a hub, empowering local cultural and creative sectors. But what is a space without a community? It took years of sensing and building that community in an organic way while at times playing with uncertainty, taking risks regardless of the outcome, all with the aim to continue with the mission - to be independent, creative, always curious, different and often weird, but convinced that is exactly the right way to go. That mission is never fully complete, rather an integral part of our journey of creating something meaningful together. We’ve built partnerships, created connections, learned from others and ourselves. We embraced nomadism that brought amazing opportunities for us, to connect, explore and grow. We’ve looked far beyond the set frameworks and structures, seeking for practices that bring value through arts and creative expression. We took a piece of each of those practices and incorporated it into our vision for a hub we simply call PROSTOR (SPACE). A word that for us has a multitude of meanings. A space that becomes real only if it’s co-created with others. Having a space while keeping the nomadic spirit, being strongly present in the community while also continuing to explore and constantly learn, is now part of the mission. More importantly, our purpose is not just to occupy a space, it is about opening it to you. To anyone in the community who is ready to engage, bring value, explore, learn and grow with us. A transition from an organization which is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, to an organization deeply rooted in the specific context managing a private physical space, is probably the biggest and most exciting risk we are taking so far. Freedom comes with responsibility. However, we are convinced that the space will make us stronger and that the community we have been building is ready to take ownership of it and contribute to its sustainability. It’s never just about the space. We believe that being sustainable in culture is possible, because after all, a super power that we have is a creative approach combined with resilience and positivity, an approach that always kept us afloat faced with impossible situations, obstacles, mindsets and “the context in which nothing ever works”.
