Economy of Arts Printing House

Audronis Imbrasas

So, the economy is a bit complicated and complex. There is not a system of permanent financing, stable financing for the independent sector, the cultural sector in Lithuania, neither at the international level nor at the city level. But we get some public support from the city municipality. I can tell my international colleagues that just for the functioning, housekeeping, maintenance, and staff, keeping in mind that it’s about 3,000 m2, and there’s activity almost every day, we do get about 125,000 euros. These days, even less. And the whole of maintenance and staff, that costs about 250,000 euros. So it means that we get approximately half of what we need just for the space’s functioning.

You should keep in mind that we function not really on a commercial basis, so we really provide our services for the independent sector, which is also not well financed. We also provide really low prices, reasonable prices. Otherwise, we as all other organisations, we apply for every program that we do ourselves, we apply to the Ministry of Culture, to the Culture Support Fund, or to some foreign embassies, or to some other funding bodies. So it’s a bit of a combination. For maintenance, we get approximately half or 60% of what we need. And we don’t have any permanent financing for projects, so it’s really based from project to project how we manage, and it varies from year to year.

I would say in total that our yearly budget then tends to be about, maybe 400,000 - 500,000 euros, if in euros. But to be honest, we never counted how big the whole economy is, if you calculate all the residents here, all the companies here, it’s really bigger. But at least from those figures we get about 50-60% for the House’s main functioning from public funds; we have to raise other amounts to get this income.

We have actually one private sponsor, which is the main heating company in Vilnius. It’s about 30,000 euros per year, which is again just a part of what we need. Otherwise, we get income from everyday activities. And from those companies that come here for certain projects.

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Audronis Imbrasas

Arts Printing House in Vilnius, Lithuania

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