We yearn for the future (still)

The façade of the National Theatre D. Maria II, Lisbon, 2020-2021

Two recent programmes on Portuguese public TV focusing on culture, as well as numerous meetings with professionals in the field throughout the year and in recent years, have intensified my concern regarding how this sector is understood and managed, what vision it projects and how it practices it.

The November 23rd programme “Sociedade Civil” proposed to discuss “Culture in the interior”. The guests were poet, diplomat and former Minister of Culture, Luís Filipe Castro Mendes; pianist and diplomat Adriano Jordão; and Tiago Nunes, President of the association CulturXis and director of the Azores International Festival. Throughout the programme, we also heard from Eduarda Freitas (from the creative agency Inquieta) and Cláudio Henriques (from the Cultura Alentejo collective).

The programme “É ou não é?”, on December 12th, aimed to question: “Is it possible to do more dor culture?”. The guests were current Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva; the artistic director of the National Theatre D. Maria II, Pedro Penim; writer Lídia Jorge; musician and writer Kalaf Epalanga; and the owner of Everything is New, Álvaro Covões. Museologist Simonetta Luz Afonso intervened remotely.

It was difficult for me to follow both conversations. I felt that they remained oblivious to what seems to me to be a reality that urgently needs to be cared for. I mention the guests’ names with respect for the professional background of each of the people invited, but also because it is necessary to question whether the public television could not have made a greater effort in terms of homework, in order to promote these debates with agents that could show the diversity of the sector and the actions of different people, in different territories of this small and diverse country. At the same time, one may also ask: and we, cultural professionals, do we do our homework?

There are some very problematic confusions, that persist in the cultural sector and the composition of certain discussion panels helps to perpetuate them:

• culture and the arts
• democratisation of culture and cultural democracy
• programming and scheduling

When the Gulbenkian Foundation's study on the cultural practices of the Portuguese was presented in 2022 – and met with the usual reactions and interpretations, which undervalue and blame the Portuguese, avoiding to question the sector itself - I wrote with some irony a text entitled The cultural habits… of Portuguese cultural organisations. I remembered this text again while following the conference “Social impact: people at the centre of cultural organisations“ (with English translation here and here) and the presentation of the ambitious project CISOC – Commitment of Cultural Organisations to Social Impact, an initiative of the National Plan for the Arts.

In the introduction to the CISOC publication, the commissioner of the National Plan for the Arts, Paulo Pires do Vale, states that “Cultural institutions are not neutral. Because of their mission, because they intervene in public space, in the way they relate to communities, in the decisions they make, how and what they programme, in the way they work with production, mediation and access”. He also asks: “How do [cultural organisations] help to emancipate citizens and help them participate more actively in our collective life? How do they promote a healthy democracy?”

I agree both with the statement and the questions asked. However, my tendency, once again, is to invite cultural professionals for an introspection: Which Portuguese cultural organisations have a defined and publicly known mission statement? Which cultural organisations actually intervene in the public space and what type of intervention that is? How can they hope to emancipate citizens and encourage them to actively participate in our collective life if these same cultural organisations do not participate, do not take a stand and continue to act, largely, to only serve the interests (intellectual, scientific, artistic and cultural) of those who run them and work in them? What does programming mean? Why is it that most people who perform this role in public cultural organisations cannot imagine anything different than “scheduling a bit of everything” (it’s called “eclectic programming”)? What is the sector's view of the role of culture in building a better Portuguese future and society? At a meeting in April at the Library of the University of Coimbra, regarding the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April revolution, I asked “Freedom for what? Culture for what?”.

In the aforementioned conference, there were some very pertinent questions, which should be given space to be better developed: like when cultural manager Maria de Assis Swinnerton questioned for how long we shall be insisting on making the diagnosis, without moving on to action; when sociologist Manuel Gama questioned the lack of strategic plans for culture in most municipalities (and, consequently, in the cultural organisations they manage) and the existence of 94 quantitative indicators in CISOC and only 16 qualitative. During the debate, Marta Silva, from Largo Residências, questioned to what extent the years-long practice of different entities operating in the third sector (a sociological term that refers to all private initiatives of public utility originating in civil society) had been taken into account. And Ana Umbelino, councillor for Culture in the municipality of Torres Vedras, suggested that we thought about how small-scale organisations, far from what we understand to be the large “centres” and, often, with incipient levels of professionalisation, can take hold of an instrument like CISOC, apply it or reinvent it.

Culture and the arts; democratisation of culture and cultural democracy; programming and scheduling: do we understand the urgency of clarifying, first of all, those of us who work in the cultural sector, the meaning of these concepts and the differences between them? Lídia Jorge - who sees around her a society in which “fathers watch football and mothers read cooking magazines” (!) - said in the TV debate that we have been discussing the same things for 20 years. We can easily spend another 20 doing so, as the country moves towards an extreme that promises “security” and “justice" to the neglected. We need to break vicious cycles, call ourselves into question, build a new vision in relation to what we do and why, position ourselves differently in society. We need intellectual honesty and courage to do it. Are we capable of taking a step forward?