The Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre is a non-governmental, non-profit institution operating in the public interest in the field of culture. The Centre’s programme is based on the name and work of the writer Danilo Kiš (1935–1989).
Since its establishment in 2010, the Centre has been active in promoting intercultural dialogue, multilingual literary and media production, non-formal education (training) in the fields of culture and human rights, research into the humanities and social criticism, international cooperation and networking, as well as supporting, promoting, socially including and empowering minorities and vulnerable groups through cultural and artistic production, training and networking.
The Centre is a member of the CNVOS network of non-governmental organisations and the informal civic initiative Glas ljudstva (Voice of the People).
Our Vision
The Centre seeks to move beyond the traditional and folkloristic understanding of ethnic minorities by fostering a new form of creativity—one that is inventive, bold, provocative, freedom-loving, unconventional, socially critical, activist and original. This approach is grounded in a new understanding of diaspora as a form of modern citizenship, characterised by multiple homes, multilingualism and interculturalism.
We see life in the diaspora as a return to nomadism, a rejection of collectivisation, a celebration of “otherness”, and a proud journey across languages. Rather than promoting a minority identity rooted in fear and caution, we advocate a contemporary and critical engagement with all the societies from which we come, and especially with the society in which we now live.
The Centre’s work focuses on strengthening cooperation and connections between different communities in the cultural sphere, particularly among vulnerable and marginalised groups, including ethnic minority communities, immigrants, migrants, refugees, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, unemployed people, women—especially those from migrant and minority communities—and others.
What We Do
The Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre has many years of experience and an extensive track record in the cultural inclusion of minorities and vulnerable groups. It carries out cultural, creative and media production, training, networking, promotional and research activities aimed at empowering members of minority communities from the former Yugoslavia living in Slovenia, promoting their social inclusion and cultural participation, and encouraging international cooperation, particularly by strengthening links between the cultures of the former Yugoslavia, as set out in the Centre’s founding document, the Act of Establishment.
When it was founded, the organisation was named the Serbian Cultural Centre Danilo Kiš. In 2021, however, the name was changed to the Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre, removing the ethnic designation in order to broaden its activities to encompass all the geographical and cultural areas associated with the life and work of Danilo Kiš.
To date, the Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre has delivered more than 40 projects, engaged over 200 freelance collaborators and volunteers, provided regular employment for eight members of staff, and organised, produced or co-organised more than 50 events in Slovenia and abroad, including theatre performances, literary events, concerts, film screenings, conferences, public forums, round-table discussions and public talks. These events have attracted several thousand participants, both in person and online. The Centre has also produced more than 200 radio programmes and podcasts, published seven multilingual books, produced more than five documentary films, delivered over 1,000 hours of training in the fields of culture and human rights, and welcomed more than 500 participants to its training programmes.
Main Areas of Activity
Literature
- Promoting the literature of immigrant writers and encouraging literary writing in their native languages.
- Publishing multilingual works of fiction.
- Strengthening networking, cooperation and collaboration among writers from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, South-Eastern Europe and Central Europe.
- Delivering non-formal education, workshops, seminars and lectures in the field of creative writing, and organising literary events.
- Connecting literature with new media (web platforms, mobile applications, podcasts and video).
Media
- Producing the only Serbian-language radio programme in Slovenia.
- Producing a multilingual podcast.
- Developing a multilingual online portal.
- Producing video content and documentary films.
- Media and minorities: research and awareness-raising campaigns.
Advocacy, Protection, Promotion and Advancement of the Rights of Minorities and Vulnerable Groups
- Empowering immigrants through creative training and cultural production.
- Advocating for the rights of minority communities through activism and advisory services.
- Running campaigns against stereotypes and discrimination affecting minorities, and implementing projects that promote the social inclusion, education and training of vulnerable groups.
- Feminism: research, awareness-raising and cultural production.
- Women’s labour rights.
Visual Arts
- Comics Beyond Stereotypes – implementing projects centred on comics, promoting women comic artists, and encouraging activism through the medium of comics.
- Photography – implementing projects in the field of photography education and organising photographic exhibitions.
Our Values
Through its programmes and projects, the Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre:
- encourages critical reflection and a deeper understanding of history, civic values, cultural dynamics and the different dimensions of cultural identity;
- promotes a contemporary, activist approach to culture by encouraging minority and vulnerable groups to engage in intercultural and intercommunity dialogue;
- promotes multilingualism and interculturalism;
- encourages Serbian and other ethnic communities to rethink their self-perception while re-evaluating their cultural and social role in Slovenia through innovative and creative approaches;
- develops new forms of cultural dialogue by bringing neglected or oversimplified cultural phenomena and connections into the public sphere;
- advocates respect for human rights and anti-discrimination policies;
- supports anti-fascism, anti-nationalism, anti-racism, feminism and pacifism, and opposes all forms of autocracy and totalitarianism.
Our Partners
Radio Študent, Peace Institute, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, ZRC SAZU, Workers’ Advisory Office, CMFE – Community Media Forum Europe, I.D.I.O.T., Ignor, Peščanik, Biblioteka XX vek, ROZA Association for Women’s Labour Rights, S.T.R.I.K.E. Novi Sad, Women’s Studies and Research Centre Subotica, Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, Centre for Nonviolent Action, Belgrade, Centre for Women’s Studies, Zagreb, Centre for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo, Women in Black, Belgrade, Casa Internazionale delle Donne di Trieste, Lupiga, Vreme Weekly, Novosti Zagreb, Večer, Dnevnik, Radio Val 202, Radio Slovenia – Programme 1, Daktari Ljubljana, Cankarjev dom, AKC Metelkova, Red Dawns Festival, Belgrade City Library, Elektro Ljubljana…
Our Supporters
- European Commission through the European Social Fund (ESF)
- European Commission through the Creative Europe Programme
- Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia
- Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia
- Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia
- Ministry of Information and Telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia
- Office for the Diaspora of the Republic of Serbia
- Public Fund for Cultural Activities of the Republic of Slovenia
- Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia
- Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia
- Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the Republic of Slovenia
- Government Communication Office of the Republic of Slovenia (UKOM)
- European Commission through the IPA Pre-Accession Assistance Programme
- Other public and private companies and donors.
Our History
The Serbian Cultural Centre Danilo Kiš was founded in 2009 (officially registered on 3 February 2010) as a non-profit association established to promote intercultural dialogue between Slovenia and Serbia and to build new connections between Slovenia and the wider region.
The Centre was established at the initiative of the theatre director Dušan Jovanović, who, recognising the distinct vision of the new Serbian cultural centre, proposed naming it after Danilo Kiš, the renowned Serbian, Yugoslav and internationally acclaimed writer.
The idea brought together a number of distinguished Slovenian intellectuals of Serbian descent, who remained involved with the Centre until 2020: Dušan Jovanović, Nikola Damjanić, Dr Svetlana Slapšak, Dr Milica Antić-Gaber, Dr Marko Milosavljević, Petar Damjanić and Dragan Mitić.
The Centre’s logo was designed by Eduard Čehovin.
The organisation’s first two projects were the Serbian Language School (co-funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia) and Shadow Theatre (co-funded by the European Social Fund and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia).
Thanks to projects funded by the European Social Fund, our team expanded, and SKCDK became one of the few minority organisations in Slovenia to develop into a professionally run organisation. For several years, it provided regular employment for members of minority communities and engaged more than 200 freelance collaborators and volunteers, the majority of whom came from minority backgrounds.
Through the ERASMUS+ programme, a Polish student of Serbian language studies and three Croatian social work students successfully completed internships with the Centre. Through a programme run by the Slovenian Employment Service, a trainee from Syria also successfully completed workplace training.
Selected Past Projects
1. Serbian Language School
We were the first organisation in Slovenia to offer Serbian language classes as a supplementary education programme in Ljubljana and Postojna (2010–2012).
2. Shadow Theatre for the Cultural Socialisation of Vulnerable Groups
We were the first organisation to bring the Greek Karagöz shadow puppet theatre to Slovenia. After the project concluded, our theatre group continued its creative work, touring Slovenia and the wider region with its performances.
The Shadow Theatre project demonstrated just how effective cooperation between vulnerable groups can be. It brought together minority communities and young people with special educational needs from CIRIUS Kamnik, who worked collaboratively to create a shadow puppet theatre.
3. Humanitarian Activities
Humanitarian relief campaigns were organised to collect aid for people affected by the floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia in 2014. The Centre also provided assistance to migrants from the Middle East through direct support at border crossings and in asylum centres, while raising public awareness of migration issues in 2016. In 2019, it organised workplace training for refugees.
4. Advisory Services for Migrant Workers from the Former Yugoslavia
More than 600 members in 2021.
In 2014, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia granted SKCDK the status of an association operating in the public interest in the field of culture.
In 2020, responsibility for the organisation was assumed by Professor Svetlana Slapšak and Dr Biljana Žikić. In 2021, the organisation adopted the name Danilo Kiš Cultural Centre.
Our Programme
The idea of establishing a Serbian cultural centre in Ljubljana is by no means new, and there is no shortage of Serbian associations in Slovenia. However, the group of people behind this initiative, many of whom had already worked together, did not wish to create an organisation based on explicit ethnic identification or on the traditional model that characterises most associations of this kind.
Such an approach, essentially conservative in nature, did not correspond to what we sought to achieve, either conceptually or as a matter of generation. We did not want to cultivate a minority identity rooted in fear and caution. On the contrary, we wanted to encourage a contemporary and critical engagement with all the societies from which we come, and especially with the society in which we now live.
It was Dušan Jovanović who had the inspired idea that an organisation seeking to establish itself within the minority sphere in a different way should bear the name of Danilo Kiš.
To us, Danilo Kiš symbolises everything that transcends narrow ethnic boundaries, everything that rejects narrow-mindedness, everything that is original, multicultural, intelligent, educated, innovative, bold and courageous. In a very particular way, he embodies urban culture. This is the aspect of Serbian culture to which we feel closest—one that, during the regrettable recent history of Serbian nationalism, represented an island of a different Serbia: anti-nationalist, pacifist and guided by a profound sense of responsibility.
The concept of diaspora has been extensively explored within literary history and today represents a field in which translation, linguistic and cultural hybridity, and the sociology of literature intersect. Minority literature is undoubtedly one of the most thoroughly researched phenomena of diaspora, particularly in relation to the dynamics between centre and periphery.
The cultural landscape of the former Yugoslavia, the history of Yugoslav literature viewed as a form of archaeology, and the intellectual and political challenges arising from the country’s disintegration have led us to the belief that our position on the margins is not merely an object of research, but also a space in which—freed from local frameworks, conventional criteria, institutional constraints and, ultimately, the limitations of small markets—we can elevate the very idea of diaspora to a new level of experimentation, avant-garde expression, disregard for established canons, and bold improvisation within the fragile edifice of literature held together by nationalist cement.
If the centre has sunk into mud or quicksand, why should culture on the margins not spread its young and vigorous wings and confidently take the lead in shaping change and innovation?
With this new understanding of diasporic culture, we are creating a platform for precisely such experiments.
Professor Svetlana Slapšak
Founder and Long-serving Programme Director
What Others Say About Us
“For literary—and especially extra-literary—reasons, immigrant literature represents a particularly vulnerable field within Slovenia’s cultural landscape and therefore requires the support of a wide range of institutions. In our case, that support came from the Serbian Cultural Centre Danilo Kiš, which, unlike almost any other ethnic cultural association in Slovenia, transcended ethnic boundaries and developed into a modern, inclusive, trans-ethnic community of young intellectuals, engaged global citizens and advocates of human rights, interculturalism, literature, integration, multiple homes, contemporary citizenship and an understanding of identity as something shaped by many different factors—not merely ethnicity or language.
Today, not only in Slovenia but across the world, an increasing number of writers move between countries, change their surroundings and homes, and sometimes even adopt a new language. Nomadism has become an almost natural condition for artists, while migration has become an inseparable part of contemporary life.”
Dr Lidija Dimkovska