This text concerns the opposition by the artistic community to the results of the contest to support the arts by the General Directorate of Arts of the Ministry of Culture, an issue that falls under the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies.
Public policies correspond to the action of the State in order to fulfill its mission. It is up to the rulers to interpret, define and act for this purpose. In democracy, there are clear benchmarks for this effect: the electoral programs of the parties, government programs, parliamentary control and the judgment made by voters on the performance of those in charge. Support for the arts by the State (which must be combined with private support) is not the central theme of media agendas, organized essentially in the face of the immediate.
1. Perceptions of the immediate and the mediate – the perception of how the presence of the arts affects our lives is different from other domains. When talking about public housing or health policies, for example, with a significant part of the responsibilities in these areas in the hands of the State, we are talking about immediate perception effects, since the lack of adequate policies can result in living on the street or in precarious housing, die or have no support in the illness.
The perception of arts policies is different. The perception effects of arts policies are mediate, or contrary to the immediate effect of housing and health policies. A hierarchy of priorities is created where the arts are considered as what you can have/do, after securing everything else.
But it’s important to change perceptions, to realize that you die slowly or you don’t live fully if you don’t have access to the fruition of culture in general and the arts in particular. A society cut off from the energy and creativity of the arts is a lesser society.
Many millions of people access museums and cultural heritage per year, go to shows or enjoy literature, visual arts and moving arts in person and through digital channels. There are immediate effects of these fruition dynamics. But the most important effect is mediate. The stable presence of contemporary artistic enjoyment and the stimulus to its production corresponds to values recognized as essential, as no society survives as such without its arts. Guard the house, give yourself health. But without music, dance, theater, literature, cinema, design, visual arts… there is no Humanity. Ban, deny, reduce access to books, films, concerts, museums and see how personal and social disease grows.
There are those who don’t realize that the growing utilitarianism – a certain “applied art” – which makes skills and creative enjoyments converge with the algorithms of online games and cordel music and literature, is enough to feed bodies and spirits. May be. But they are bodies and spirits fattened for slaughter – the death of body and spirit. The arts are, when fully exercised, devices for liberation, construction, growth of the gaze, which gains new interpretive, critical and creative skills. The arts are a long-term contribution to the composition of the human being. Humans who only have a home and health are no different from rabbits with their burrow and their strength to find carrots. What distinguishes the human species from other mammals is its capacity for domains such as the arts, literature, politics, religion, philosophy.
No minor issue is the system of public support for the arts.
2. The Portuguese situation – We live in a moment of cosmopolitanism, with a growing attraction of foreigners and mobility, which also reaches the artistic environment. State financial resources to support the arts have increased in recent years. However, there is discontent on the part of various cultural agents with regard to the results of competitions supporting the arts.
The current model of public support for the arts in Portugal is very state-owned, bureaucratic and limited. Sometimes there is no money and a fair distribution is sought with the available criteria, sometimes there is more money and a distribution is made that excludes cultural agents of recognized merit, as happened now. If a public support attribution model produces perverse results, this means that it must be improved. This situation demands serious reflection and urgent action from the State. This does not mean throwing more money at problems – financial resources are finite – but, among other things, creating adjustment mechanisms for aberrant situations. The problem is not new, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for it.
3. A proposal for the Present – it is necessary to resolve the current situation of disregard for relevant cultural organizations (zero state support after regular recognition of the activity carried out). Finding, with transparency and balance, solutions that do not detract from the logic of the competition and recognize the undesirable results that have been achieved. This implies casuistic and transitory responses, which do not contradict the legal framework and achieve the desirable result of continuing the public service provided by artistic entities of merit and which are recognized by the State, peers and citizens.
4. A proposal for the Future – I argue that the Directorate-General for Arts should be transformed into the Portuguese Agency for the Arts, contrary to what is preferable in other fields of public policy on Culture – such as Heritage, Archives and National Museums. Like AICEP, D. Maria II National Theater or OPART, this Agency can assume the form of an EPE (Public Business Entity), with compensatory compensation, lottery funds and its own revenue. In fact, this statutory change can promote three important things – distance from political power, reduction of bureaucratic burden, greater organizational dynamism. If it makes sense that there are strategic lines of cultural policy for the arts defined by the government, it would be better if the response to the performance of arts policies does not focus on this, as is now the case. Public policies for the arts need to guarantee equitable support for the system of creation, production, programming, enjoyment, circulation and promotion of the arts. And this support needs to occur with contractual dynamics that, while guaranteeing access to new agents, promoting plurality, demand and geographical diversity, do not destroy artistic work of recognized merit in progress. This balance has not been reached and the current model – with the successive increase in State funding for the Arts – has not necessarily generated a scene that guarantees, at the same time, more innovation and presence in the territory. It creates new dependents on public support, in a logic based more on support criteria for cultural agents than on a strategic vision of the presence of the arts in Portuguese society and its projection in the international context.
Arts policies have support programs as an important element. But the existence of a new institutional model that absorbs the current competences of DGArtes, can allow its streamlining, renewal and improvement of perspective: reinforcing the work of articulation with the educational system; improving orientation towards increasing the cultural offer in the territory; promoting the dynamics of interaction with the economy and tourism; expanding the international projection network of Portuguese contemporary arts; generating incentive systems for artistic improvement and networking; creating public and private partnerships; stimulating debate on new issues and their consequences (such as the role of artificial intelligence, sustainability or copyright protection models); expanding the offer of services to citizens; dealing with changes in institutional and market systems and promoting professional status.
In the diversity of models that different countries follow in this area – general directorates, funds, agencies, tax incentives – which correspond to greater centralization or distance to power, I believe that Portugal can benefit from a model that updates the available instruments and improves procedures, as well as as the scope of action.
Public policies for the arts, which require stability, durability and consistency (and transformations, when necessary), in a mission not always understood in the face of urgent political agendas, have decisive effects on societies, in the medium and long term.
Effects of materialization of cultural densification and international projection; promoting full literacy; of a qualified citizenship; of personal and social appreciation; to improve the statutory condition of all members of a given society, regardless of their income, profession, creed or ethnicity. It’s not little.
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