Adress:
Industrigatan 2A, 10 tr
112 46 Stockholm
Telefon: 08-667 88 90
Telefax: 08-667 88 11
E-post: council@klys.se
LITHUANIAN ASSOCIATION OF ARTISTS
For meeting in Visby, Gotland, Sweden 16-19 May 2007
Vilnius, 20/11/2006
LAA functions from 1995 and now is considered as important social partner by our Government. We represent majority of art creators in Lithuania and we try to improve conditions of work for all artists are they our members or not. We delegate our members to numerous advisory boards and commissions that perform self-government in the culture sector. We have majority places in our main advisory board by the Minister of Culture, the Council of Culture and Arts of Lithuania (CCAL). The President of LAA is usually the Chairman of the CCAL. Such is a neat façade of our system. Things are more complicated behind it. Authorities try to avoid consulting with the social partner when our opinion is predictable ant not very favorable for them.
We do not have any other financing from the State except support for our programs. Our members pay about 150 euro per organization a year. It covers about 10% of our expenses. LAA employs president, vice-president, bookkeeper, and secretary. We adopted a Resolution on institutional financing of the LAA in our last annual meeting on April 17th.
LAA has approximately one meeting per month and one annual conference. We try to coordinate our activities and speak one voice to the authorities. The Board of LAA delivers our annual prize (approximately 1450 euro) for distinctive works of professional arts.
After the Law on Artistic Creators and their Organizations of the Republic of Lithuania came to power on 15 th March 2005 the Board of Status of Artistic Creators and their Organizations was established by the Ministry of Culture of LR and all members of LAA (Lithuanian Association of Artists) obtained the status of artistic creators as organizations. Some our members obtained the Status without any reorganization, some of them had to adopt their statutes to the requirements of the Law, and three of them had to create new different organizations in order to separate their members who can obtain the status according the Law from those who can not. All our members were busy with these legal procedures all the year and at the end of May 2006 all eleven of them had the Status and were qualified as members of LAA. The LAA itself did not go through these procedures since the Law regulates organizations of artistic creators whose members are natural persons, not juridical bodies. Thus LAA as organization can not have status of artistic creators it means that LAA is not providing with the Status those who enter our organization.
What the status of artistic creator means for an individual artist today? There are some privileges to get a little bit better pension but they are not substantial. There is privilege of the health care insurance. Artists with the Status can pay approximately 6 euros per month instead approximately 38 if they have agreement with the local tax office to declare their income every month and pay the amount if they do not have any income during the month. If they have income of 174 euros they are not supposed to pay at all. If their income is lower they pay proportionally lower per cent from these 6 euros. We consider this as quite important privilege for free lanced artists. And the last but not least is that ateliers and studios of artists are free of property tax. We consider the Law on Artistic Creators and their Organizations as a platform for a dialog with our Government and Parliament about what the Status should mean. So the meaning of the Status depends on our activity as well. Now we are under process of evaluation how many our members uses the privilege of health care insurance.
We met our Prime Minister and Minister of Culture on May 3rd and discussed with them several questions considering pensions of artists, financing of culture, support of our organizations, and other things today important to us. We came to agreement that such meetings should be held on regular basis.
Kornelijus Platelis,
President of LAA