The City of Belgrade candidacy for World Book Capital 2018 Кандидатура Града Београда за Светску престоницу књиге 2018 Kandidatura Grada Beograda za Svetsku prestonicu knjige
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The city of Belgrade is the capital of the Republic of Serbia, located on the crossroads of many land, river and air traffic routes. One of the highlights of its multiculturalism is parallel use of both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets for writing in Serbian.
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Добро дошли у Београд! Dobro došli u Beograd! Welcome to Belgrade!
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Belgrade is a very important culture hub and its museums, theatres and galleries for decades have provided infrastructure to some of the most interesting festivals in Europe. Its libraries and archives preserve valuable collections and documents about history and heritage of the illustrious Balkans.
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The decision to submit the application for World Book Capital 2018 has been made in accordance with the strategic direction of the development of the City of Belgrade as a sustainable, creative community that provides appropriate environment for the creation of knowledge society.
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Books and reading process have been identified as major cornerstones of creativity, critically needed to grow effective education, efficient industries and benevolent environment for all citizens of Belgrade.
Logo grada Logo UBSM, BGB, NBS
универзитетска библиотека.бгд
The preparation process for the application was conducted in coordination between the City of Belgrade Department for Culture and a working group of library professionals.
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čitanje читање reading
Consultation with various stakeholders included talks with decision makers in culture and education sectors, with the focus on institutions funded by the City of Belgrade and humanities departments of the University of Belgrade. Civil sector activists, i.e. NGOs active in culture sector, especially those dealing with culture aspects of refugee crisis were consulted as well as decision makers at publishing and book distribution companies from Belgrade.
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Activity programme
• General aims and principles • General outline of expenses and fundraising strategies • A plan for communication and awareness • International cooperation and partnerships • Main facilities and infrastructures • Activities description
General aims and principles • Merging activities in virtual and physical worlds • Local and international interconnectivity of activities for multiplying participation effects • Gamification of activities for positive effects on participation
General outline of expenses and fundraising strategies Activities will be generally funded by institutions designated to implement them based on their regular budget income, ongoing projects income if feasible, and on the basis of application for national project funding by these institutions.
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A plan for communication and awareness The overall aim of communication within the period of the term is to relate information about activities locally and internationally to various stakeholders and to foster creation of a virtual community that shares the love of books and reading.
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The central hub for communication will be created as a web portal encompassing all information related to the activities during the term.
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Techniques of gamification will be employed in order to attempt to further boost participation and community building within the portal.
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The main form of communication through the portal will be supplemented by more traditional means of communication, via national and regional media and social networks.
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Guerilla marketing techniques will be also applied where appropriate, locally in physical space, and through major book-related Internet websites.
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International cooperation and partnerships Most of the activities will have an international aspect bearing in mind the principle of intertwining local and international participation.
Cornerstones of bringing together international community will be the communication portal and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on books and reading history. Many participatory activities will have intentionally global character in order to promote locally selected books, authors and readers and connect local audience with their peers across the globe.
The activity programme is making most of Belgrade’s geographical position to foster international collaboration. Travelers passing through Belgrade will be offered to participate in appropriate and innovative activities and special attention will be devoted to activities related to refugees.
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Activities that involve international cooperation will in general foster intercultural communication and further understanding between peoples and nations.
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Main facilities and infrastructures • Traditional annual cultural and scientific events, • current local, regional and international brands related to books and reading, • existing marketing infrastructure available to the City of Belgrade administration,
• general urban refurbishing implemented before 2018 by the City of Belgrade administration, • novel infrastructures that will be prepared a year in advance especially to support activity programme.
The International Belgrade Book Fair is one of the oldest and the most important literary events in the region attracting around 1.200 accredited journalists and 150.000 visitors. The 2017 Fair will focus on broadening already strong local and regional ties in preparation for 2018 edition that will be more internationally oriented, featuring specific links between local and international book markets.
FEST is an annual international film festival held in Belgrade, Serbia since 1971 attracting around 100.000 spectators. It has special local cultural significance and making the 2018 edition of the festival book and reading related, will provide special local flavor that will last throughout the year.
The Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) takes place annually in Belgrade since 1967 and it is one of the most important cultural festivals in the region receiving numerous international awards. The 2018 edition of the festival will be centered on the selection of theatre events related to books and reading.
The Belgrade Music Festival – BEMUS is one of the most distinctive classical music festivals in the South-East Europe. Its 2018 edition will support the overall effort to position cultural events of the year in support of books and reading by employing associative marketing techniques such as organizing special classical music performances in libraries and book stores.
The Belgrade Beer Fest, an annual festival of popular music and beer, that attracts up to a million visitors during 5 days of performances by the most notable local and regional pop and rock bands. For its 2018 edition, the festival will be re-branded as Belgrade Beer&Books Fest 2018 featuring a new B&B logo.
Science festival and Museum Night are two very popular annual events in Belgrade that attract tens of thousands of visitors. By making their 2018 editions book related, organizers hope to both add to and benefit from overall pro-reading environment that will be on during 2018 in Belgrade.
Marketing infrastructure available to the City of Belgrade administration encompasses marketing instruments available through public transport system and other systems that are under control of the city administration. This offers possibilities to organize a year long campaign that will significantly add to the awareness and general pro-reading environment in Belgrade 2018.
General urban refurbishing implemented before 2018 by the City of Belgrade administration will be put to use for branding and providing infrastructure for activities during the term. One of the goals is to establish new publicprivate partnerships that will allow for features that support reading and publicly praise books and reading to be incorporated in general urban refurbishing implemented before 2018.
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Other existing infrastructures including current local, regional and international brands related to books and reading and novel infrastructures such as the Internet portal and Book and Reading MOOC will be put to use within the framework of various activities described in the next chapters.
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Activities description Preparatory period September 2016 – April 2018
Activity 1 – Alumni of the book The activity is composed of enlisting the pledge for active support of many successful and respectable individuals who are not directly involved with book industry or whose primary profession is not writing, for participating in the activities programme and using this support for promotional purposes.
The range of individuals involved in this activity encompasses individuals of high social and professional ranking locally and internationally who are in debt to book, either because of gratitude for success steaming from reading or for the love of reading or writing.
Activity 2 – Emerging face of the Capital This activity encompasses the creation of elements of the marketing plan for the promotion of activities programme during the term in two steps.
1. Market research focusing on research of local stakeholders groups and secondary data for international stakeholder groups. 2. Strategic marketing plan creation will encompass creation of plans for implementation of specific promotional tools for certain stakeholder groups and creation of necessary promotional tools.
Activity 3 – The Agora of the Capital The purpose of this activity is to create basic digital infrastructure for activities programme in the form of the Internet portal that will be an information hub of the Capital and will at the same time provide space for community building.
The portal will have two aspects – informational, which will be the public face of the Capital in a virtual world and community building part, where people from all around the world will be able to log in and have personalized experience of participating in activities and communicating with other individual portal users.
Activity 4 –Book MOOC The aim of this activity is the creation of a six weeks Massive Open Online Course on book history allowing for the connectivity between the MOOC and information portal created within activity 3.
The course will be designed and implemented with the collaboration of a major MOOC platform such as Coursera or edX and professors of the University of Belgrade with possible collaboration from international experts such as SHARP (The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) members.
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Activities description Term period April 2018 – April 2019
Activity 5 – Virtual Capital Within this activity, the running of the central information hub and public availability of MOOC on book history during the term year will be defined.
Translation of materials available via portal into multiple languages will be provided and expert support for intercultural communication will be available. The challenging part of this activity will be moderation of participant communication in community building part of the portal.
Activity 6 – Physical Capital This activity will deal with two kinds of actions that will primarily take place in physical space of the City of Belgrade. The first group of activities will make use of existing brands related to books coming from Belgrade such as author’s name of renowned Nobel Prize winner Andric.
The other group of activities will use rebranding of many small scale cultural events and festivals to add to the synergetic effects of creation of pro-reading environment in Belgrade throughout the period of the term.
Activity 7 – Spreading the Capital’s local vibe This activity will provide for the election of the best printed book describing local vibe of Belgrade and ceremonial delivery of translated printed copies of this book to four different corners of the world in order to spread the World Book Capital vibe around the globe.
The distant parts of the world are voted for by participants of the portal who in this way decide the translation languages. Hopefully, readers from distant parts of the world will have the chance to comment with Serbian readers who proposed the book on its quality and themes via the information hub.
Activity 8 – Immersive reading for the world on the run This activity highlights the immersive effects of reading in a world in which many readers are almost always distracted.
Stakeholders will be offered different book paragraphs and a question ‘’Is this passage immersive for you?’’ The paragraphs that are voted to the top as the most immersive will be offered by public transport of the City of Belgrade, Serbian national air transport company and river boats on two Belgrade rivers to passengers who need to be immersed in a literary world.
Activity 9 – Local nominations global presentations - the best sounding book This activity will start in the virtual world with local competitions in regions across the globe, in which ample number of information portal participants is available, for the best sounding book in a language that is foreign for that region. The books that got the most votes in every
region will get the chance to be promoted via virtual events hosted in Belgrade and transmitted to events in physical space in different world regions where books that are voted up represent local language. People from around the world will have the chance to express their opinions on literary paragraphs just based on the sound of the unknown language and receive back opinions on paragraphs in their mother tongue.
Activity 10 – Local nominations global presentations – the best bedtime reading This activity will start in a physical world in Belgrade where librarians tasked with its execution will talk to potential readers and ask them to record their choice of books they read for making someone (their kids, themselves, their spouse) fall asleep.
These recordings will be then uploaded to the information portal and local participants will have the chance to vote the best recording. Participants from different regions will have the chance to upload their recordings and start local votes. The second phase of the activity involves the discussion among the portal participants trying to find out if the best recordings in a foreign languages are making them sleepy or not and why.
Activity 11 – Global voting for local initiatives – the best translated paragraph on Google This activity will start with librarians from Belgrade making Google translations of several literary paragraphs of Serbian authors into other languages.
Local audiences engaged via information portal will have the chance to vote for the best (or funniest or most remarkable) translated paragraphs in their native tongues. The results coming from around the world will be then discussed by eminent literary critics during cultural events in physical space in Belgrade libraries.
Activity 12 – A book for good luck and safe travels Librarians from Belgrade will initiate this activity by organizing fieldwork research among various groups of travelers passing through Belgrade on the topic of what certain group considers appropriate books as a gift for good luck and safe travels.
The finding will be shared with portal participants, discussed internationally and best books voted up. Most popular books in opinion of portal users worldwide will be printed in several different languages and given to travelers passing through Belgrade for the good luck and safe travels.
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Further details of activity programme and other materials that are part of the formal nomination of the City of Belgrade for the World Book Capital 2018 are located within the flash memory that is a part of this booklet.
So, please turn on your digital machine, tune in to materials available within the flash memory of this booklet and drop out of the world of paper reading.
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Impressum Adam Sofronijević, University Library Belgrade Jasmina Ninkov, Belgrade City Library Tamara Butigan, National Library of Serbia Nataša Matović, print design Aleksandar Milošević, digital design Aleksandar Grbić, bookbinder Ana Đorđević, Živorad Kuzmanović, Matea Milošević Photographers