In its sixty years of operation, the third programme of Radio Slovenia Program Ars has become an indispensable cultural and artistic institution that has secured an important place in the cultural and media landscape. Its activities encompass six decades of culture and literature, a quality selection of serious music and jazz, live programs, and at the same time the enrichment of the national archive.
"Society needs a prism through which a person better perceives and understands the world and himself. Part of this prism, which helps him in this, are also cultural and artistic programmes. Our Ars Program is certainly no exception," wrote Acting Director of Radio Slovenia Mirko Štular.
The cultural and artistic programme of Radio Slovenia began broadcasting in the fall of 1963 as the 2nd programme of Radio Ljubljana. Its first editor was musicologist Borut Loparnik. In 1969, the programme was renamed the 3rd programme of Radio Ljubljana. The programme was initially broadcast for four hours a day, then for five hours, and since 1978 for nine hours. In 1998, the programme switched to 24-hour broadcasting with the introduction of the European Classical Nocturne at night.
Since 2007, the 3rd programme of Radio Slovenija has been composed of the Editorial Board for Serious Music, the Editorial Board for Culture, and the Editorial Board for Drama Programmes, which were joined in 2013 by the Editorial Board for Religions. Until then, music and drama content on the 3rd programme of Radio Slovenia was prepared by the Music and Drama programme of Radio Slovenia.
Today, the tasks of the Program Ars are the transmission of artistic content with a special emphasis on Slovenian artistic creation and re-creation, as well as informing about cultural events at home and abroad, recording Slovenian musical works and performances by Slovenian musical re-creators in the field of serious music and jazz, recording Slovenian artistic expression and production Slovenian radio plays and the creation of a national archive of all genres of artistic radio.
"High anniversaries are an opportunity to browse through memories, pictures, photographs, archives and bring back to consciousness the nationalized radio play Zvezdica Zaspanka (1952, directed by Frane Milčinski - Ježek), memories of Ježek's studio and backgrounds, which are so beautifully and without hair on language is described by his family members, to Jože Privšek with his hands raised high, to Rapa Šuklje's show with Angela Vode from 1982, the only one in which we hear her voice, to the extraordinary directorial opus of Igor Likar, which is waiting for someone to explore it. Just like a radio archive, which contains, for example, seventeen thousand literary broadcasts," writes Ars Program editor Ingrid Kovač Brus in the Ars 60 collection, still in awe of the infinite beauty of everything that this incredible air brings.
