Ana Carla Fonseca interview: "The Netherlands and Brazil could cooperate in developing creative talent"

In June 2013 Dr. Ana Carla Fonseca from Brazil was invited to the Netherlands to participate in an International Visitors’ Programme. The four-day customised programme had been organised by both The New Institute in Rotterdam and DutchCulture, centre for international cooperation in Amsterdam. Cultural Exchange Brazil – The Netherlands interviewed Fonseca about her experiences with the International Visitors’ Programme.

Ana Carla Fonseca Reis – public manager and economist, holds a Master in management and a PhD in urbanism. For fifteen years she led innovation projects while based in São Paulo, London and Milan. In 2004, back in Brazil, Fonseca founded Garimpo de Soluções, a pioneering company in the creative economy and creative cities. She is a curator of seminars, consultant for companies and governments, and United Nations’ Adviser for the Creative Economy. Fonseca is the author of several books like Economia da Cultura e Desenvolvimento Sustentável (2006) and Cidades Criativas (2012). She also conceived, organised and edited series of leading-edge e-books, such as Creative Economy as a Development Strategy (2008) and Creative City Perspectives (2009).

Mrs. Fonseca, what was the aim of your visit to the Netherlands?

“The aim of my visit was mainly to get to know what’s happening in the Netherlands related to the creative economy and creative cities field, which is my area of work. My intention was to understand the governance in this field, what the objectives are and how they relate to national, regional and local policies.”

The International Visitors’ Programme that was organised for you consisted of visits to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science and several Dutch cultural organisations and companies. Among others, you visited the top team Creative Industries, Creative Industries Fund NL, housing corporation Trudo in Eindhoven, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Art Factories Programme (Bureau Broedplaatsen) in Amsterdam. You made a tour through the harbour area of Rotterdam, the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam and creative rural area Strijp-S in Eindhoven. You got to know Doepel Strijkers Architects, ZUS architects and design platform Capital D. What was your experience with the programme? Did it meet your expectations?

“The programme that was organised very much fulfilled the aim of my visit. It was exceedingly enriching and diverse. I think it had a very good balance between the doers or creative entrepreneurs, and the policy behind.

What can add value for Brazil are initiatives like ZUS, the Art Factories Programme and Trudo, in the sense of what kind of governance they have behind, how much autonomy creative entrepreneurs have in their initiatives and how they are related to the local government: as partners, supporters, or ‘nothing to do’. These are the kind of things that are really important or relevant for us in Brazil.

Obviously the idea is not to enforce a model: that would never work, it depends a lot on the context. Basically it is to get inspiration from what’s happening in your country and to add a new spice to our own soup, a new ingredient to our own recipe. My purpose was to understand the processes underpinning visible products.

What is interesting for us as well is how we can actually deal with developers, builders and real estate in a different way. You have a completely different situation as far as the building system is concerned because of credit extension, high interest rates and so forth, but the generation of human development indicators that go far beyond the usual financial business case is something that interests us. I think you have reached an interesting model for you that gives much inspiration for the generation of human indicators in Brazil.”

Looking back to your experiences with the International Visitors’ Programme, what in your opinion in Brazil could be of interest to the Netherlands?

“I think you are highly entrepreneurial. We in Brazil are entrepreneurial as well and now for the first time statistics show that Brazilians are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial not because they have to but because they want to. Maybe the difference on our side is that we are entrepreneurs in spite of the huge government weight, the high cost of ICT access, outrageous tax rates and bureaucracy. Learning how to be entrepreneur in this context may also be interesting for Dutch entrepreneurs.

Impactful models like co-working, crowdfunding, alternative governance arrangements, social technologies and more organic, bottom-up approaches may be extremely inspiring, as they are practical results of having to find your way through. Especially in moments of crisis like the one you’re living now and that we have been living for years.

Our ways of flexibility and parallel thinking are again not something that you could copy rightly because of diverging circumstances but it could be inspiring for you to find your way.“

Where do you see possibilities for Brazil and the Netherlands to work together, in the field of the creative industries and creative economy?

“What I think could bring the highest added value of our countries meeting and having contact, is actually to develop things that neither of us know. The creative economy is very much shifting in the world. I believe we have been changing our view from creative industry to creative economy and then from creative economy to creative talent.

It means that we need to make sure that a person - whoever he or she is that is been born now - will be ready to live and work in a world that does not exist yet, that he or she will add value and conciliate economic, social and cultural benefit. The main goal of our partnership would be not that we learn what you know and that you learn what we know, but that we cooperate together, extremely forward looking: how to remove bottlenecks in the development chain, how to find new governance, how to bring benefits to the bottom line, how to educate to keep the creative claim in a person alive etc. This would be a great goal to work together on I think.”

Where can one find more information about your work, the creative economy and creative cities in Brazil?

“A source of more information could be Garimpo de Soluções’ website because it is in different languages like English. Every time you can find new articles there. They are also announced on Facebook. International seminars that I organise are announced as well. The seminars are streamed online in the original language and in Portuguese.”

Garimpo de Soluções (in English)

The New Institute’s Visitors’ Programme

DutchCulture’s International Visitors’ Programme

Interview & text by: Josine Backus