The conference on cultural policy and music education is thethird subsequent conference organised by IRAM during the last three years. The first was Reflections on Macedonian music - Past and Future (two conferences organized in London November 22, 2001, and March 12 2003) and the second was Contemporary trends in musicology and ethnomusicology (organized as a section of the festival Struga Music Autumn in September 21, 2002, and September 22, 2003). We are expecting that these conferences will continue taking placed annually in the following years.
        The subject cultural policy and music education covers another very important aspect related to the activities of IRAM. In fact, the rising importance of IRAM as a pivotal institution concerned with the theoretical issues related to the Macedonian music culture and its digital archiving, inevitably led us to the problems of cultural policy and music education. Until now IRAM has achieved outstanding results in this area, not only through building of its large digital archive (more than 8000 minutes of digitised or recorded materials) but also through the dissemination of the idea for the importance of the digitisation of cultural heritage.  But digital archiving and the research are not the only area that contributed to the promotion of IRAM. IRAM’s success during the last three years was based on a blend of research, archiving, and educational and art activities.
 Institutionally, IRAM is a unit at the Department for theory, education, composition and conducting at UKIM Faculty of Music, i.e. higher music education in Macedonia. The research work, recording of the music events, IRAM Internet Student Radio, video documentaries etc., were accomplished as a joint project of the professors and students at UKIM FM and other contributors, specialists in different areas from Macedonia, Europe and the US. We would like to point out the link we have managed to establish between the educational processes and the research and the art activities. Yet, the main secret behind the fast development of IRAM is the enthusiasm of the participants in its projects. The enthusiasm was nourished through a highly selective choice of the most pressing issues both in local and global environment and attractive areas such as digital sound processing and digital preservation of the cultural heritage. In addition, IRAM general orientation to follow and adjust to the extremely fast changes in the global and local cultural environment, and especially the fascinating technological progress, makes IRAM a very flexible and adaptive institution.
        The extreme dynamism is not the only characteristic of the XXI century cultural milieu. Its permanent segmentation or emerging of new cultural circles, genres, streams etc., makes the music culture more complex than ever. It has direct impact on any analysis of any of the numerous phenomena, even at a very simple level. Everything is a result of a complex inter-relation of factors, and it is almost impossible to find isolated events any longer. This is how we were navigated to approach the subject cultural policy and music education.
        Although at first glance it seems that we are connecting two remote problems, our experience from some of the previous IRAM activities, proved that our orientation was right. In fact, when we exchanged the opinions about the conference with some of our colleagues, the first reaction was that these are two different subjects, which should be reviewed separately. An additional argument was that culture and education in most of the governmental and other institutions is separated in different sectors, consequently covered by different administration.
        To a certain level this is true for Macedonia, too, as music education area falls under the administration of the Ministry of education, while music culture (concerts, festivals, publishing etc.) is the concern of the Ministry of culture.  Here, we would like to point out to an attitude developed and supported by some of the professors from the "art" schools at University "Ss. Kiril i Metodij" that art, i.e. music education should be the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Culture. This is in accordance with our idea about the direct relation between the cultural policy and music education.  The proponents of this idea were especially vocal during the critical decade of the economic transition when major changes took place both in the government subsidies for education and arts. One of the explanations for this attitude lies in the formation of the teaching staff of the three "art" institutions of UKIM - the schools for music, drama and visual arts. The majority of the professors are distinguished artists, i.e. they are well known composers, directors, painters, musicians etc. Culture, or Ministry of culture seems a more natural environment for them. Consequently there was a belief, that there would find more understanding for art education in general, or music education in particular, if it is sponsored and regulated by the "native" Ministry, i.e. the Ministry of culture. As a result, Ministry of culture of Republic of Macedonia sponsors some educational activities, such as scholarships for studying abroad and seminars. Fortunately, the financing of all levels of music education in Macedonia was not transferred to the Ministry of culture, which underwent permanent budget cuts during the last decade. The budget cuts are characteristic of the Ministry of education as well, but there is still safer for the music education to belong in the Ministry of education, than to the Ministry of culture. The budget cuts in the Ministry of culture always happened first, due to the perception of the political forces that they are the less harmful for their position in the public opinion and in general, they are first to be sacrificed when social welfare of the country is in question.
        Despite of the contradictory statement we have just presented, the connection between these two areas, culture and education, is not only very natural but also consequential. The educational output must be correspondent to the market demand and the social needs. One of the major regulators, which should determine the long-term strategy, is cultural policy.
        To support the last statement we will observe the problem through the economic way of thinking.  Let's take for instance the labor market.
The human resourses working in the cultural area are mainly recruited from the educational institutions in Macedonia, with very few exceptions. There is a direct relation between the music labor market  and the outcome or graduation of musicians from the high or higher education in Macedonia.
        Speaking about music sector in Macedonia in economic sense, as elsewhere, there is a major division between the profitable and non-profitable area, which is defined by the genre boundaries of popular genres from on the one handand artistic music on the other. We do not know the exact figures about the participation of the human resources in the profitable area, because most of the payments are done in direct transfers of cash without appropriate accounting, taxes etc. Most of the musicians are considering these activities as part time jobs, despite the fact that it generates bigger revenue than their regular jobs (sometimes in very different areas). There are only very few full time employees mainly producers, managers, supporting services (stage managers, sound and light engineers etc.). We also do not know the exact figures about the degrees of music education  (if any) of the human resources involved in the profitable sector. We can only confirm that there is a wide span from selftaught (without any regular music education) to musicians with university diplomas.
        The non-profitable sector covers the art genres, such as classical or contemporary music, and it is almost fully supported by the Ministry of culture. At the moment in this sector there are several hundred employees mainly in the main budget institutions (Philharmonic orchestra, Opera and Ballet of the MNT), and they are mainly graduates from UKIM FM.
        It is important to stress out that together, these two areas make up a labor sector, which under the current economic conditions in Macedonia plays a very important role in the economic development of the country. This statement could be further supported with the other economic parameters such as the revenue generated from the music market in general (concerts, music clubs, sound and video carriers, copyright etc.).
        Coming back to the link of music education and the music market, we could observe the impact of music education through two separate lines. While in the case of the music labor market, there is a direct influence of the outcome of the music education institutions and the market supply; the second line is represented through the indirect influence of the effects of the general music education on the taste of the audience for both profitable and non-profitable areas.
        We know that the economic results of all economic sectors, including the music sector, are equally influenced by a set of external environmental factors. At the moment we will select only the legislation and other regulatory mechanisms established by the governmental and non-governmental institutions. This should provide us with an additional argument for the main concern of our conference - the relation between the
cultural policy and music education.
        In fact, the legislative and the regulatory documents of both governmental and non-governmental origin in Macedonia, or again elsewhere, are the major sources for the cultural policy statements. They define the mission and the objectives of the cultural policy at different levels.
        Speaking about legislation in Macedonia, we have to address the two major laws: the Law for culture and the Copyright law, that determine and influence the cultural policy in Macedonia. In the accordance with the Law for culture, one of the major documents, which regulates the “national interests” in this area, and directly the distribution of the budget in a long run, is the National program for culture. In accordance with the same law, this document is adopted by the Parliament of Republic of Macedonia, which increases its importance. however, the experience of almost a decade, shows that despite of the long term orientation of the document (5 years), each new government, which means new distribution of the political forces, tries to adopt new National program for culture.
        The legislation and government regulations are not the only factors that influence the cultural policy in Macedonia, Non-governmental institutions, such as different associations of composers, performers, educators etc., adopt different documents that present their long term interests in the formation of Macedonian music culture.
Among the other factors that shape up the cultural policy, are the global movements, and the consumer's and their interest to participate, i.e. purchase the cultural products and services.
        IRAM, as an institution related to the archiving of cultural heritage is also one of the factors that influence or could influence in general the cultural policy in Macedonia. For instance, IRAM international conferences where the problems of the cultural policy were explored, contributed in a certain way to the awareness of these problems. For instance, one of the papers presented at the Second Struga Conference, concerned with the hypothetical models of the composers revenue concluded that there was a lack of a consistent cultural policy for stimulation of the contemporary music works. The consequence could be a total decline of this genre, particularly in the creation of larger music forms. Thus all three IRAM conferences are complementary in some ways. Encouraged by the positive results and the possible impact IRAM could have on the formation of the opinions related to the problem, IRAM’s next step was to establish a close cooperation with the Commission of the Ministry of Culture for the selection of projects and programs that will be financed by the Ministry in 2004. IRAM was a co-organizer of two presentaions/me-etings of the music managers (December 2 and December 24) where the problems of the cultural policy were discussed.
        On the other hand, we have to take into consideration tha IRAM is a part of UKIM FM, and the education processes in this institution. In order to determine its strategic, research, archiving and educational policy, both IRAM and UKIM FM, have to address the problem of cultural policy.  That’s why we insisted so much on the building of the relations, or establishing the chain: cultural policy - music culture - music education. In this paper we have presented the view that higher music education, i.e. the final stage of the music educative system, should adjust to the goals defined by the cultural policy from on the one hand and the music market on the other. The appropriate strategic planning cannot be done without appropriate links to cultural policy and the long-term needs of the music market, both local and global.
 We hope that even in this brief overview of the problems we have provided enough arguments that we are dealing with a very complex phenomenon that could be approached and analyzed through very different aspects. In fact, the main goal of this introductory text was to raise questions and provoke discussions. To do that, we used the concept of cultural policy as a set of regulations established by the governmental and non-governmental institutions in order to improve of the future cultural development.
It is also clear that we do not expect that our first conference will answer all the questions tof such an intricate and complex problems. As we have mentioned, this first conference should mainly promote the problems and bring the awareness of the importance of the strategic planning. We have approached the problem with the same modest abitions as we did with the first and later on the second subject of the IRAM conferences.  But our previous experience proved that gradually, as it happened with the previous conferences, there was a steady development that brought about more and more important conclusions and results.
        This conference consists of 8 presentation (including this one), six from Macedonian contributors, and 2 from the international participants. At the beginning of the conference we had the opportunity to listen to the Introductory notes of Mr. Renato Campo, the Tempus representative. This was also a contribution to the discussion of our subjects, because it illustrates how the cultural policy of the EU Commission, influenced the cultural policy and education in Macedonia. The group of Macedonian contributors consists of the IRAM researchers working on different assignments in IRAM. Stefanija Leskova will present the pilot project where in which she tests the instrument and a methodology for the formation of a database on all music events in the capital of Macedonia in a year. We have two other papers presenting the taste preferences for different music genres among two different population groups - elementary school students, and senior students at UKIM FM. Aida Islam made a research on some aspects of the organization of the elementary music education system of Turkish minority in Macedonia, while Eleni Novakovska looks in the problem of the absence of curriculums in Macedonian music education that covers the popular genres. Special interest for us and for the conference, are the papers by two contributors Dieter Ringli from Switzerland, and Simon Young from UK They give an insight of the problems in two very different environments ( in political, economical, cultural etc. sense).
        Similar to IRAM previous conferences, we did not expect a coherent group of papers, or presentations. In accordance with the XXI century segmented culture, and particularly music culture, we expected very segmented theoretical opinions, even among Macedonian contributors. We believe that soon the quantity of the papers presented at these conferences will cover more and more of the missing parts of the mosaic. Still, the variety of the papers is not a drawback. We consider it an advantage, which will provoke interest and understanding of some different and remote aspects that could be missed in the too strict, very specialised approach, typical for science today.
        Our main concern is to keep the pace with the extremely dynamic changes both on global and local level. And for this reason again, it is of crucial importance is to open the discussions about the problem. We hope that this conference, together with all other IRAM activities, will prove to be significant contribution to the further research of this intricate subject.