The Contemporary Art Center Skopje was founded in 1994 as part of the network of contemporary art centers set up by the Open Society Foundations in Eastern Europe. Until 1999, CAC operated as a foundation whose main goal was to provide support in the form of funding, logistics, and contacts to the contemporary art scene in Macedonia, thereby facilitating faster development, international promotion, and contemporary artwork production.

 

From its beginning and throughout 30 years of operations, CAC has been strongly committed to bridging important gaps in the Macedonian culture and society, such as the international promotion of contemporary Art from Macedonia, audience development, enabling cultural content for rural and deprived regions, and artistic activism as a tool for initiating social changes through culture.
Throughout our development, we discovered that the new modern cultural policy of the 21^st century must be driven by the cultural needs and habits of audiences, and should be developed in interaction with the cultural offer. Our approach to cultural policy is the model of community-driven cultural functionalism, which implies decentralization and the development of parallel cultural models. More specifically, it implies a community and audience-driven culture that builds upon the life, needs, and habits of audiences and production, and is characterized by broad participation in creation, decision-making, and implementation.

 

In 2011, CAC received the Western Balkans Award for Social Change (administered by the Swiss Cultural Program and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). In 2017, CAC’s urban actions were acknowledged with the prestigious award “Eco Activism”, administered by the united environmental initiatives and organizations in Macedonia.  CAC’s team is comprised of 2 full-time and 2 part-time staff members and more than 10 volunteers engaged in different areas of operation.

CAC serves as ground-breaking organization in two fields, those being community-organizing practices through arts and culture, and Creative Communication Activism. Activities taken in these fields did not only allow us to address important gaps in society, but also established our organization as generator of ideas for numerous CSOs, communities and donors.

Urban Art Actions and Creative Communications were introduced as community-oriented cultural program initially targeting local problems, which opened doors to creative artistic communications, creative activism and urban art actions as extremely useful tool for addressing problems of local communities, instigating public debates and increasing visibility of problems and issues that affect local populations and communities. Today, Urban Art Actions are implemented across Macedonia and the Western Balkans region and are one of widely recognized CSO.

Since 2014 in order to secure independent self-sustainable space for cultural and artistic production CAC’s create and built Mobile Montage Gallery which very quickly became a highly recognizable independent cultural space in Macedonia. It aims to support visual and artwork production that address specific local context in the Macedonian society. In addition, the gallery serves as hub and incubator for multitude of initiatives and ideas implemented as collaborative effort between the art/cultural scene and the civil society sector.

 

Association of citizens Contemporary Art Center Skopje

Considering new trends and needs of our constituents to be able to have full participation in defining programs, strategic priorities and actions of Contemporary Art Center, since 2023 part of Contemporary Art center is reorganized as Association of Citizens.

This was done in order to create new, simple more open entity where artists, cultural practitioners and other interested creative citizens will be able to fulfill and express their creative needs.  

The Association of citizens Contemporary Art Center Skopje is valid successor of all achievements, inventions, history and background of Independent cultural institution Contemporary Art Center Skopje.

 

STRATEGIC PRIORITYS of Association of citizens Contemporary Art Center Skopje are:

STRATEGIC PRIORITY # 1 To increase opportunities for artistic and cultural production, thereby enabling free and authentic expression.

Min direction of this strategic priority in to increase opportunities for artistic and cultural production, thereby enabling free and authentic expression that shapes the society. This priority will be pursued by careful planning of funds and diverse programs on artworks that send messages to the general public and audiences about problems and possible solutions and approaches to sustainable and progressive social and cultural development of North Macedonia and the region.

 

STRATEGIC PRIORITY #2 To develop creative activism as tool for communication and mobilization of the public in solving and communicating of ongoing problems of the society, and to use combination of Art, culture and activism as initiator of social changes.
Idea of this priority is to use art and creative activism as a tool for communication and mobilization of the public in resolution of different community problems and issues that cause tensions in the society. Creative activism is becoming a worldwide trend, notably because common forms of activism such as protests, public petitions, printed materials, etc., are becoming obsolete and ineffective in the modern age and time where social networks and electronic media shape the public opinion. CAC was the first organization in the broader Western Balkans and South-East Europe region that has launched creative activism programs and actions and used creative activism as a tool for communication, mobilization of the public and resolution of different issues and problems.

 

STRATEGIC PRIORITY #3 To encourage local and small communities to use their potential for production of specific local cultural initiatives and shape local context.
Basic approach of this priority is to encourage local and small rural communities to use their potential for production of specific local cultural initiatives strongly connected with local context or needs. Primary purpose of this learning-by-doing priority is to apply the bottom-up approach to identification of local communities’ needs and potentials. In particular, this approach is pursued to encourage formal and non-formal groups to articulate local needs and resources and to initiate, plan and implement activities with broad support from local stakeholders. We believe that this approach is important and effective in terms of mobilizing local communities and resources to become active participants in improving local living, by using own resources, values and fields of interest, combined with our knowledge, equipment and small financial support. This approach to local development yields good results, given that local population is engaged in generating initiatives and ideas and results in great interest at community level, strong public impact and long-term sustainability of initiatives.