Mapping Brazil - The Cultural Field: The Ministry of Culture

The Ministry of Culture in 2015
The Ministry of Culture has been implementing several alterations to its policies. As a result, in 2012 it set up its Department of Creative Economy. Structural changes are now being discussed and some of the initiatives and programmes being developed are described below.

The Ministry continues to divide its purview into six major departments: Cultural Policy, Citizenship and Cultural Diversity, Audiovisual, Creative Economy, Institutional Articulation, and Cultural Fostering and Incentives.

Its framework also comprises seven related entities, of which three are parastatals and four are foundations operating in different fields: Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute – IPHAN; the Brazilian Museums Institute – IBRAM; the National Cinema Agency – ANCINE, Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation – FCRB, Palmares Cultural Foundation – FCP, the Fundação Nacional das Artes – Funarte [National Arts Foundation], and the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional – FBN [National Library Foundation].

The Ministry of Culture’s regimental framework includes eight regional offices with nationwide coverage whose functions include providing logistical and operational support for events held by the Ministry in the different regions: North; Northeast; South; Midwest; Bahia and Sergipe; Minas Gerais; Sao Paulo; Rio de Janeiro, and Espirito Santo.

Therefore, in addition to the overview of entities mapped for the 2009 survey, the Ministry of Culture is developing National Policy for the Arts, starting from plans for segments, debates, conferences and studies. Segment-level plans consist of sets of proposals that emerged from meetings held in the 2005 -2010 period by civil society representatives and Ministry of Culture specialists. The aim of the National Policy for the Arts will be to encourage theatre, dance, circus, visual arts and digital culture, while reformulating several current guidelines.

Cultural spaces
Another significant product of the current federal policy are the so-called Pontos de Cultura, or ‘culture spaces’. These projects are supported by the "Live Culture – (Cultura Viva)" legislation, which promotes society's existing cultural initiatives as an important means of enriching cultural diversity. There are now some 4,600 of these cultural space projects active all over the country and multiplying. The target for 2020 is 15,000. Cultural spaces provide a capillarised social base capable of penetrating communities and territories, particularly the most vulnerable segments of society. This social base extends to other social segments too, reaching the middle class and particularly young people in cities and their low-income peripheral neighbourhoods, university students, young artists, new economic and productive systems. In other words, a completely new economy has been invented and experienced by people for whom cultural activities pose alternative employment, fuller lives, and social inclusion.

Digital culture
The programme aims to update cultural production by means of digital media. From the public viewpoint, this will help the population as a whole to get easier and more readily available access to technological devices, connect more people to the Internet, and lower the costs of producing and distributing cultural products and services. The result is a boost in circulation of their contents, all of which have developed new cultural dynamics in society.

Education and culture programme
In the course of devising an integrated policy for action, the programme will be training educators, managers and cultural development agents, holding courses, and offering content and methodologies. It will contribute to the progress of these institutions, enabling new perspectives and socio-educational opportunities to broaden the role of social and cultural communities and organizations in formal academic and educational spaces, and discussing the role of community cultural organizations in the educational system. The programme's initiatives include training agents, integrating and mapping school libraries and providing teacher training for the arts.

Visual arts
Public policy for this segment is guided by Funarte, the National Arts Foundation, through projects fostering research, artistic residencies, scholarships and awards. However several states and cities have museums and institutions for the visual arts, so the segments has one of the highest levels of capillarity for museums and cultural centres, as well as dozens of art galleries posing an increasingly larger and more consolidated market.

Performing arts: Theatre, dance and circus
The National Arts Foundation – Funarte is attached to the Ministry of Culture. Its mission is to develop public policies to foster visual arts, music, theatre, dance and circus events. Its main objectives are encouraging production and training for artists, developing research, conserving public memory, and advancing education for the arts in Brazil.

In addition to organizing programmes, procurement tenders, festivals, awards and events, Funarte runs 20 cultural facilities including theatres, exhibition halls and venues for music, the National Circus School and spaces for residency projects involving groups of artists, in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia. In 2014, it held 812 artistic activities including circus, dance, theatre, music, exhibitions and others, attended by a total audience of 460,000 people. In its turn, the Procultura Programme invested US$ 24 million to support circus, dance, theatre, visual arts and music.

Brazil's National Circus School – ENC offers training and refreshing courses for 50 artists every year. Federal government's annual investment in this segment is US$ 2.5 million , in addition to those made at city and state levels. Circus has shown strong development and Brazilian performers are being exported all over the world.

Funarte's popular and classical music programmes involve tender procurements, courses, surveys and awards. A programme supports brass bands by distributing instruments and sheet music, with courses and exchange programmes for artistes. Funarte is also supporting a Federal University of Bahia project called ‘Mapping Dance’ for 2015.

Brazil now has 1,248 theatres. Funarte itself manages a number of venues around the country and provides financial support for groups occupying public facilities in several cities. However, the chapter that charts drama productions reveals this scenario as very heterogeneous.

Books and reading
The National Library Foundation carries out government policy for capture, custody, preservation and dissemination of intellectual production. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO described its collection of over 10 million items as the world's 7th largest national library and Latin America's largest.

The federal government's National Book and Reading Plan – PNLL coordinates public policy guidelines for books and reading (particularly libraries and reading mediator training) along four axes: democratizing access, fostering reading and training mediators, encouraging reading and its symbolic value, and developing the book-publishing economy.

Continue to Mapping Brazil - The Cultural Field: Culture and Society