With the economic growth, GNP increase and introduction of Saturday-off system, leisure time is on the increase. People are beginning to think much of their quality of life. In company with these phenomena, their cultural needs are also on the increas...
With the economic growth, GNP increase and introduction of Saturday-off system, leisure time is on the increase. People are beginning to think much of their quality of life. In company with these phenomena, their cultural needs are also on the increase.
Degree of local autonomy has been increased since 1995 and the importance of local culture began to make its appearance. Local culture is one of essential elements in local autonomy. The progress of local culture is synonymous with the progress of local community. The realization of cultural welfare and cultural rights has a significant value in cultural policy and will be an important criterion to judge how powerful a country is and how further local communities have developed. In reality, Andong city held such events as ’97 International Mask Dance Festival, ’99 visit of Elizabeth Ⅱ on 21 April which are significant enough to give Andong an opportunity to take its historical turning point in cultural policy. Andong is the core of Korean traditional culture so the potential for local cultural development will be limitless.
The Local Cultural Center is a non-profit private organization which was established to develop, preserve, hand down local culture. The growth of the center is directly related to the development of local culture. Thus, the Local Culture Center has to be activated to materialize local people's cultural needs and to develop local culture. The subject of this study is how to activate the Local Culture Center to improve local culture and this study is centered on the Andong Local Culture Center. The documentation research was implemented with questionnaires. The questionnaire was collected from the representatives and members in the center, students there, officials who are in charge of culture and art division in Andong city and related workers.
The Local Cultural Center is a non-profit cultural and non-governmental institution established on the ‘Local Cultural Center Promotion Law’ which runs public business. Its purposes are to effectively conduct all the cultural business. To accomplish those purposes elements such as proper organizational structure and personnel resources, finance and facilities, relationship to the communities has to be considered, which is the unit of the analysis of this study.
The results of it include the following. In regards to organizational structure and personnel resources, the distribution of its members was not in good balance of the sexes. The average age was very high. In organizational structure, the number of the office workers was insufficient so there were difficulties in managing its business and the experts of culture and art also insufficient. In regards to finance, the portion of the operating budget was not enough to run its business. In regards to the facilities, the office building has to be quickly built. In regards to its business, the community participation was very low because of the lack of advertisement. The internet advertisement and web-based propagation should be appropriately conducted. The relationship to the community seemed to be in harmony.
To settle the problems above, several solutions can be suggested. First, to secure required experts, training programs to educate local culture administration experts has to be prepared by professional training organizations. For Local Cultural Center business, office workers who can plan businesses must be employed. Second, the management strategy should be planned in the long term so that the programs can attract more government and private support and funding. Third, to secure places for cultural activities local government should cooperate and share its facilities with Local Culture Center considering real poor situation. And then, gradually, the center has to try to raise funds to build its own facilities. Fourth, programs featuring local characteristics should be planned, which needs to be connected afterwards to local festivals and tourism. Fifth, in regards to the relationship to the communities, network including local government, affiliate institutions, cultural art institutions, social service organizations has to be established and cooperate to run programs.
Until now, the study on Local Culture Center was conducted intermittently with practical analysis. The activation of Local Culture Center will be directly connected to the activation of non-profit private institutions so further study on this subject needs to be done.