Macedonia’s Cultural Institutions Boost Visits, Sustainability
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| Zdravkovska (right) and Andijana Spirova, the curator of the Mother Teresa Memorial House, with a group of visitors at the museum. |
With the understanding that a culturally educated workforce plays a key role in promoting the cultural heritage of a country, USAID’s Human and Institutional Development Program (HIDP) provided support for Renata Kutera Zdravkovska, Marketing Manager of the Museum of Macedonia, to enroll in a graduate program for culture management at Jagiellonski University in Poland. Through her studies, Zdravkovska learned contemporary approaches to the work of cultural institutions, gaining the advanced skills and knowledge required to improve her museum’s operations and increase its visibility.
Museums are a nation’s memory bank, preserving, protecting and showcasing its rich history and tradition. As state funded institutions, Macedonian museums are facing difficult times, unable to implement all of their promotional activities with ever-decreasing government funding. In order for these institutions to survive and become financially sustainable, museum managers must become more proactive and undertake new activities to attract visitors and generate additional income. Museums must be transformed from storage facilities for cultural and historic artifacts into institutions that breathe life into those artifacts through exciting social and cultural events. Achieving such a profound transformation requires management and marketing staff with specialized knowledge of cultural institutions.
After successfully completing the program at Jagiellonski University, Zdravkovska opened a museum store in central Skopje and developed other new markets—conferences, important state events—for the museum to sell an extensive range of products related to its collections. She ordered production of promotional materials, established a museum information billboard in the center of Skopje, and implemented a number of special projects for the Ministry of Culture. These strategic efforts paid off, and contributed to the museum’s increased financial stability.
Zdravkovska’s success drew attention from government officials, and in January 2009, she was named Director of the Mother Teresa Memorial House by the Macedonian Ministry of Culture. Within her first four months, Zdravkovska has already achieved significant results in promoting the Memorial House among both international and domestic target audiences. Cooperation with many tour operators has yielded organized visits for tourists interested in the life and deeds of Mother Teresa. The Memorial House also hosted a delegation from India’s Ministry of Culture, which is producing a documentary about the Memorial House to raise international awareness of this unique monument in Macedonia. Zdravkovska and her staff are working on organizing educational workshops and souvenir production to attract more visitors and promote the Memorial House as a center for cultural and social events.
Zdravkovska has big plans for the future. “We are working on producing and selling souvenirs, we have opened our library with spiritual books to the public, we will organize open cinema performances during the summer period,” she said. “All with one aim: to attract more visitors to Skopje and Macedonia, to the home dedicated to the spirit and mission of love in recognition of Mother Teresa’s deeds.”
USAID’s HIDP provides training and technical assistance focused in the democracy and governance, economic growth, and education sectors. The program also conducts organizational performance assessments of key Macedonian institutions and implements targeted interventions to improve their effectiveness.
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