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15 - 24/06/2018

The Malta Festival Poznań which took place from 16 to 25 June 2017 was unique not only due to its programme, but also its specific circumstances.

In 2017, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Professor Piotr Gliński declared in the media that the festival would not receive the grant necessary to fund its 27th edition despite the grant having been approved pursuant to a three-year agreement made in 2016.

We tried to resolve the above situation by sending repeated letters summoning the Minister of Culture and National Heritage to fulfil the terms of the agreement he had signed. This was ineffective.

The circumstances forced us to take necessary legal action. On 5 June, 2018 we filed a lawsuit seeking an order that the State Treasury pay the approved funding. The Malta Foundation had satisfied all the conditions of the said agreement, and this made the refusal to pay the grant unreasonable.

At the same time, we would like to mention that in the difficult situation caused by the Minister's failure to comply with the agreement, we were supported by artists, the audience and sponsors. The scale of their support exceeded our expectations.

Several dozen Polish and international artists and cultural institutions took part in an auction for the Malta Festival. Moreover, 1838 people took part in the crowdfunding campaign Zostań Ministrem Kultury (Be a Minister of Culture) on the wspieramkulture.pl website. Within two weeks, we collected PLN 392,889.50. The donations made it possible to fully deliver the festival programme as planned, in addition to other programme activities of the Malta Foundation, including the Nostalgia Festival, which for the past several years has not been supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

As we have already stated, when the court awards us the grant pursuant to the aforementioned agreement, the money received under the crowdfunding campaign, which is currently being used as an interim measure to cover the liabilities relating to Malta Festival Poznań 2017, will be transferred to the statutory activities of the Malta Foundation.

We wish to thank everyone who has been involved in helping the Malta Festival: The Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights, lawyers Wojciech Marchwicki and Przemysław Tacij of Hogan Lovells who are representing us in this case pro bono, as well as all the artists, the sponsors, the audience and friends of the Malta Festival Poznań who have supported us in this difficult time.

Michał Merczyński, Malta Festival Poznań Director


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