Sources of income of Meet Factory

In terms of financing the Meet Factory is very happy because on one hand we are so glad to have this space for only one crown a year as a rental to the City of Prague. And the City of Prague is also the biggest funding partner that we have. We have a 4-year grant from the City of Prague, which covers up to 35 – 40% of our production.

And the rest is covered by different sources of financing. We are in good partnerships with different kinds of foundations, international and Czech. We are in partnership with the Mondriaan Funds from Netherlands, in partnerships with many cultural institutes, Goethe Institute, French Institute in Prague, with Czech-German Fund for the Future where we try to gather money for specific projects. Also we have some budget from the Ministry of Culture. And we are also happy to have some private sponsors. On the other hand we also are making some money ourselves from the ticket sales, from the bars and also from commercial rentals.

I would just like to say that the City of Prague is really generous with us that we have this amount of funding. I know it is not very common in Europe. It is probably because Prague is pretty wealthy city with influx of tourists. And the City of Prague is supporting the performative arts, the living art more than other cities around us. It is not directed only towards the heritage but also towards the new culture as we are. And we have this as Zuzana said, the partnership with the City of Prague has two parts. The first is that they gave this building to us. Now we did the deal with them so that the rent ends in 2025. Which gives us some more time to think things over and to do some long-term projects. And on the other hand they cover 35% of our budget.

The situation in Prague is different in that the City of Prague is main funding body for many productions and many theatres as we are, in comparison with Ministry of Culture, which gives us some 8 - 9% of budget. I know this is different to let’s say Slovakia where it is vice versa. Yes, we try to make the 30% of budget is the commercial money which means tickets, bars and rentals, which is less than we would like it to be. But it is pretty hard to do this when beer is so cheap in Prague.

There is also one thing, which is maybe interesting about funding and how it is structured within the organization. Because some of the departments do not have commercial income. This mainly concerns the gallery, the residencies and the theatre as well. They do sell tickets but they do not make so much money or the turn over is not so big. So the music and commercial rentals are the main source of our own income or funding making our own money. On the other hand the gallery and the residency programme have the most partnerships either financial or institutional. And we also are trying to fundraise for the whole building. So some of the grants or some of the funding is very specific to each department and some of the funding is also directed towards the whole building, which we are currently very happy because we have applied for European grant and we got it. So we are very happy and looking forward what we will be able to do with this.

CultureFighter

Sources of income of Meet Factory

Michal Brenner & Zuzana Jakalova

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