Lazareti heritage complex

About

The Lazareti heritage complex, consisting of ten interconnected buildings and five courtyards, was built in the early 17th century. It is located within the UNESCO World Heritage protected city centre of Dubrovnik. Originally, the complex functioned as a quarantine station for travellers visiting the city from abroad. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the complex had a wide range of functions, including as stables, a warehouse, a market, and a military barracks. [1;2;4]

Since 1989, Art workshop Lazareti, an NGO aimed at stimulating art and community participation, develops creative activities from the complex. In 2000, it presented a vision to the City of Dubrovnik to formally utilise the heritage complex as a cultural, social, educational, and artistic centre. Two stages of renovations followed. At that time, the War of Independence at the beginning of the 1990s and decades of neglect has made Lazareti an endangered heritage site. [1;4]

Nowadays, Art workshop Lazareti and four other NGOs, namely Student Theatre Lero, Audiovisual Center Dubrovnik, Deša (a regional centre focused on Civil Society Development), and Luža (focused on media culture), operate from the revived complex. Together, they organise various events, including exhibitions, workshops, lectures and theatre and dance performances. They aim to foster art, culture and heritage and establish a horizontally integrated socio-cultural centre that operates in line with the cultural and social needs of the local community. They also provide activities for tourists that visit the city. [1;3;5] Furthermore, one will also find art workshops and shops within the complex. [5]

Governance

The Lazareti complex is owned by the City of Dubrovnik. When in 2000, Art workshop Lazareti formally proposed to turn Lazareti into a cultural centre, the City of Dubrovnik offered them a long-term contract of 25-years for part of the building. This contract allowed Art workshop Lazareti to access funding from the World Monuments Fund to conduct much-needed renovations to the building. Moreover, they built collaborations with other NGOs that moved into the building. Despite this success, discussion lingered in the city council as to whether a valuable building close to the centre of the city should be provided to NGOs instead of utilised for more commercial purposes. [2;4] This was in line with a dynamic of over-tourism in the city and the tendency to commodify and commercialise many heritage properties. [4]

To counter this, the five NGOs started to collaborate as the informal Platform for Lazareti and managed to secure their place in Lazareti. The five NGOs still cooperate under the name of Platform for Lazareti. In the past years, they have been working on a set of regulations to make their collaboration more official and enable other organisations to organise events in the Lazareti complex as well. [4] Moreover, drafting these regulations has helped establish a more clear collaboration with the City of Dubrovnik. [4] Forum for Lazareti is driving a process to find a suitable form of participatory governance for the complex, amongst others helped by the ‘Culture in Centre’ programme (2018), applied for together with the City of Dubrovnik and Dubrovnik Summer Festival, and the URBACT Network ‘ACTive NGOs’ (2019).

In 2019, the City of Dubrovnik enabled the public company ‘Dubrovnik Heritage’ to govern the Lazareti Complex and develop a programme for the buildings not in use by Platform for Lazareti. This has amplified the need to find a suitable collaborative mode and form of participative governance that allows for synergies to arise between the activities of different actors in the complex. [4]

The relationship between Platform for Lazareti and the City of Dubrovnik is not without its challenges. [2;4] Yet, the efforts of Platform for Lazareti have already resulted in their socio-cultural strategy for the complex being included in the citywide Management Plan for the Lazareti Monument Complex (2016-2020) and the Dubrovnik Culture Strategy (2015-2025). [2] Steps are made to further improve the relationship, among others, through more collaborative projects. [2;4]

Business Model

The physical renovations of the Lazareti complex have been conducted in two main phases through internationally funded projects. The first project, ‘Community Place – development of socio-cultural centre in Lazareti’, has been funded by a call from the World Monuments Fund to renovate endangered heritage sites. [1;2] Between 2015 and 2019, the project’ Lazareti – creative hub of Dubrovnik’ has focused on renovating three complex buildings that had not undergone renovation yet and improving tourism offer. It was a cooperation between the City of Dubrovnik, Platform for Lazareti and private enterprises. [1;2;3;5] It has been funded through the European Regional Development Fund (2014-2020). The project’s total investment was €4.504.327, of which approximately 77% has been funded by the EU [5].

Art workshop Lazareti and the other NGOs operating from the building cooperate in national and international funded projects to conduct social and creative activities, as well as to help set up a participatory governance structure. For example, between 2018 and 2020, the project’ Place of Community’, co-financed by the European Social Fund (85%) and the Republic of Croatia (15%), was utilised to design principles of conduct for the Platform for Lazareti. The total value of the project was approximately €294.270. [1]

Art workshop Lazareti generates income through services provided and renting space in the Lazareti complex. Furthermore, it receives donations and utilises funding and subsidies to conduct specific projects. [1]