www.aravot.am inquired of Ruben Babayan, the artistic director of the Hovhannes Tumanyan Puppet Theater, what he thought of the intended budgeting of culture. Mr. Babayan replied that he didn’t follow the discussions, since the issue of financing the field of culture was not solved, the respective legislation was not adopted – for example, a sponsorship act. “The government financing will always be little, because the state tries to take on financing culture, so to say, by 100 percent and it doesn’t work. Armenia has been an independent country for more than 20 years, but the Soviet mentality is still present – centralization and financing everything from one source. Certainly, on the one hand, it
offers a good opportunity to supervise everything better, on the other hand, the state supervision brings about functionaries’ abuse of office,” the director of the puppet theater maintains.
He is convinced that adoption of a sponsorship act will not only solve the problem of financing, but also bring about a change in mentality, “It will connect culture with business and they will have an important impact on one another. Europe and the US went through that long ago. In those countries, there was animosity between business and culture at the time too, but now business is interested in culture, because it realizes that culture makes society more civilized and it is a guarantee of good business.”
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Gohar HAKOBYAN
