By remembering the faces of all departed Serbs, learning from mistakes, both our own and those of others, and by retaining and developing our constructive characteristics, we can create a desirable country where people are happy to stay and others come to intentionally.
Priceless natural wealth, a multitude of extremely gifted scientists, artists and athletes, and the wise selection of instruments for the modernisation of society are all imposing themselves as being the natural route to shaping the image of the modern Serbia. By remembering the faces of all departed Serbs, learning from mistakes, both our own and those of others, and by retaining and developing our constructive characteristics, we can create a desirable country where people are happy to stay and others come to intentionally.
The modern Serbia should primarily nurture education, preserving its cultural heritage and constantly improving the quality of life in every sense. My husband is an Englishman who decided to move to Serbia and who speaks passionately about the new face of Serbia, which is on the rise, based on foundations of survival skills, the desire to endure, the ability to create improvements and an ear for the innovations brought by the new world. I believe that pretty much sums up the idea of the modern Serbia – open, progressive, comfortable and inspirational.
If we recall that the 1995 Belgrade concert of the band The Prodigy was the first international musical event (and not only musical) in Serbia since the imposing of sanctions in 1991, and that it represented much more than just the performance of a vocal-instrumental ensemble, but rather came to symbolise Serbia’s reopening towards the rest of the world, or vice versa, we can see how much art – regardless of whether that’s academic art or pop culture – is often of great importance to the forming of an image of a society, even a political image.
Our international image has significantly changed for the better, and it seems to me that our image of ourselves has perhaps finally entered an affirmative phase
Viewed from the aspect of the creative industries, borders between societies are blunted and blurred, because creativity speaks the universal language, whether it relates to visual, audio or performance media.
Authors from Serbia have long since existed on the world map of art and the creative industries, while digitalisation and the information age have contributed to the increased availability of new brands, patents and artworks that are of equal quality as those available anywhere else on the planet. The growing number of domestic creatives who are present on the global scene, as well as the liberalisation of the domestic market and the boom in domestic producers and brands, certainly form a very impressive picture of the cradle of all these creators. In that sense, our international image has significantly changed for the better, and it seems to me that our image of ourselves has perhaps finally entered an affirmative phase. It is thankless to talk about what Serbia has given creatives in the second year of the pandemic. For now, I think the most important thing for us is that we can continue to work unhindered. We can dedicate ourselves to the finer details when the time comes for that.
