Pontos de Cultura

Discussion

Raquel Renno:

"The Brazilian Ministry of Culture created the Program "Cultura Viva" in 2005. The program was created with the intent to "strengthen the cultural prominence of the Brazilian society, valuing the cultural initiatives of groups and communities, expanding their access to the elaboration, circulation and enjoyment of cultural aspects and services according to the Pontos de Cultura[2]. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, between 2004 and 2012, 3662 Pontos de Cultura were created in the country. During the last years, the success of the initiative has conveyed the idea of the Cultural Points to Argentina and Peru, among other countries (around 11 countries stated that they were interested in the proposal).

The innovative aspect of the Pontos de Cultura proposal in the Brazilian context is the understanding rendered to small and fragmented local cultural initiatives from the viewpoint of the generation of knowledge and innovation, overcoming the paternalistic culture comprising economic parameters confounding economic poverty with cultural poverty.

Directly or indirectly, the Cultura Viva program has supported groups of free culture activists, involved with free software and hacker ethics to structure themselves in different ways, by using digital technologies as a tool for production and dissemination of knowledge or the subject of experimentation itself. It is not uncommon to find there free radios such as Coco da Umbigada (from an Afro-Brazilian worship house), rádio Kiriri (run by Indigenous people in Bahia) or radio programs called Maluco Beleza prepared by patients of a psychiatric center in the state of São Paulo. These initiatives have enabled the community to generate their own media content, encompassing the oral tradition of these groups and enabling the participation and immediate connection to the public without any filtering system from the traditional mass media." (http://www.medienimpulse.at/articles/view/648)