Cultural support for sustainable development in Vietnam

Sweden's cultural support to Vietnam promotes the respect for people as creative and productive beings. Cultural support also aims to provide the tools for Vietnamese people to participate and express their views and enables them to better influence the course of lives and the decisions which affect them. Creative expressions of culture are a means to achieve an open society, supporting a democratisation process and cultural diversity in Vietnam.

With these overall goals, the five-year programme for cultural support to Vietnam aims:

• To enhance mutual understanding between the peoples of Sweden and Vietnam through cultural exchange program;
• To enhance knowledge and management capacity for people working in the field of culture in Vietnam and Sweden;
• To restore the traditional handicraft villages with focus on the minority groups.

Through the above specific objectives, the programme will support Vietnam to gradually develop and complete  cultural policy as a whole.

During five years, the programme will cover the following sub-projects:

• Cultural exchange programme: promotes the interchange of ideas across boundaries for mutual benefit. The program aims to build professional links between Swedish and Vietnamese cultural and arts institutions. Five partnerships have been established within the areas of fine arts, music, film, literature and theatre.  Copyright is an issue of interest and be integrated in the cooperation.
• Restoration of intangible cultural heritage specially aims to support the preservation and development of traditional handicraft villages, with focus on the minority groups
• Cultural Policy for Development: supports Vietnam to complete its cultural policy.

Sweden has supported culture development in Vietnam since 1992. The support has been closely linked to the support to media development.

Swedish-Vietnamese Fund for the promotion of Culture

The 15-year old Culture Fund is financed by Sida, with an annual amount of almost 2 million SEK (equivalent to approx. 250.000 USD).

The main objective of the Fund is to contribute to a multifaceted and pluralistic cultural development in Vietnam and to the preservation and further enhancement of traditional cultural values and identity.

The Fund was established in late 1992 and functions as a non-governmental organisation. Basing on its Guiding Principles, the Fund corresponds to direct requests coming from the grass-roots level and helping individuals and private organisations to develop creative cultural activities on their own. The Funds has a special focus on the countryside, mountainous and remote areas. It restricts itself to small scale and short-term projects. The Fund serves mainly as catalyst for activities in all cultural fields under guidance of a Management Board composing leading cultural activists and experts. It is present in 64 towns and provinces. Over the past 15 years, the Fund has supported to nearly 2000 small projects nation wide.

By reaching out directly to cultural organisations and groups, individuals at local level without using formal governmental structures, the Funds partly contributes to the development of an emerging civil society in Vietnam.