“Working with and not for young people”, listening to them and absorbing their ideas to create an addendum to the Porto Santo Charter: this was the main objective of the residency that the municipality of Loulé hosted, between the 3rd and 6th of November, promoted by the National Arts Plan together with other partners.
At 10:00 am this Wednesday, in a room at the Gama Lobo Palace, in Loulé, around a dozen young people from several European countries were fine-tuning the final details of the report that will allow for improvements in Letter from Porto Santo, which since 2021 has served as a guiding map of principles and recommendations for applying and developing a paradigm of cultural democracy in Europe. The idea came from the National Arts Plan, but has the involvement of the Organization of Ibero-American States, UNESCO, and many other national partners.
But what brought these young people here?
Created in 2021, the Porto Santo Charter has recommendations for three sectors – for those who make cultural policies, for educational and cultural institutions and for citizens in general.
“After we took office, we realized that we hadn’t listened to young people about this, and so the Plan will begin a process, starting in 2021, of listening at European level, to hear what is important to young people in terms of culture. This listening has already happened: in November last year, we held a conference in Caldas da Rainha, and these young people who are here are a kind of messenger for everyone else. With their voices, they are here to build an addendum to the charter”, he explains to Sul Informação Ana Bela Conceição, intermunicipal coordinator of the PNA.
Pedro Manuel, a 19-year-old from Loulé, was one of those chosen to be part of this group.
Since it was also a cultural decentralization initiative, they felt that their contribution would be essential to the debate.
Passionate about music for as long as he can remember, the young man regrets that the arts are still viewed with some stigma and hopes that this addendum to the Charter will “change mentalities”.
«I think we lack tools to understand and value culture – and I think this comes largely from school, where the curriculum plant beliefs in us that culture is a waste of time and something for a certain type of people, more elitist at times, but no, popular culture, for example, is also important", highlights Pedro, in conversation with our newspaper, pointing to a piece of work that is on display at the Palácio Gama Lobo.
“This space is a good example of that. Perhaps young people don’t feel invited to come in, and that’s also a topic we’ve been discussing here: the fact that spaces seem closed, as well as the idea that arts is a course with no future. But if arts are more valued for their importance, that will change,” the young man continues.
However, these are not the only ideas that are (poorly) rooted in society. Another idea, also mentioned by Sara Brighenti, deputy commissioner of the NAP, is that young people today do not care about anything.
“What happened here these days shows exactly the opposite. The most striking thing was to see that we had a very committed, very intelligent group here, who know how to have fun, think together, and who were the first to show up to start work. So there was a collective intelligence here that connected people, both in this pleasure of being together, and in the pleasure of working together for a common purpose,” the deputy commissioner confessed to Sul Informação.
Furthermore, Sara Brighenti stated that “young people feel that they are being neglected too much”, but that they want to show that they are “a force of the present”.
“The first complaint is: use our wisdom, which is different from yours, but it exists. Trust us, we want to participate, we do not want to be a passive agent, as if we were a pot to be filled with knowledge, we are not that, we are a living flame that wants to participate,” he continued.
And the desire to participate was felt, according to the organizer, from the first to the last day. In the more theoretical activities, but also in the more dynamic ones, at dinners, lunches and even on the trip to Querença.
Loulé was, in fact, the place chosen for this meeting due to its geographical characteristics, but also to the importance it already gives to culture.
“When we thought about holding this meeting, we thought we had to do it in a decentralized location, where something new and different from the usual could emerge. Going to Loulé and Querença, being in contact with nature, and being able to be in this absolutely inspiring place, in connection with our identity, was the choice. Loulé embodies the principles that this Charter also brings us and we feel the full support from the Council, which wanted to support us at all levels and read the set of proposals that come out of here”, concluded Sara Brighenti.
The National Arts Plan, which is now in the second phase of implementation, has, according to Sara Brighenti, worked hard over the last five years on the idea that culture, being a pillar of education, is also a pillar of the school as a space for fusion, diversity and plurality.
“These first five years were the time when we presented this different way of being a school. And now they are implementing it. We started with 65 groups and, at the moment, we have more than 525. So, now we have schools that have been with us for five years and are very mature and can already teach other schools how to do it. And the Algarve is an example in this because it is the region where we reach the most schools.”
In these schools, the deputy commissioner of the National Arts Plan states that there has indeed been a change.
“It was clear that it is not just art teachers who have to take care of the arts, it is all teachers, the entire educational community. In some cultural projects, there was great involvement from the community, parents and those who make up the educational cultural fabric of that region, that territory, and that is very important”, he highlighted, also reinforcing the importance of opening the school to outside stakeholders.
“That’s why we started bringing cultural mediators, museum directors, library technicians, cultural councillors, political decision-makers from that region, parents, artists, in short, those who really wanted to commit to the cultural plan of that group to the schools. This mix between what is inside the school, the school community and the extra-school community brought many changes and brought many opportunities, because sometimes resources arise from these partnerships that are formed”, he concluded.
Even so, Sara Brighenti admits that there is “a long way to go” and stresses that, “just like the Porto Santo Charter, which is open”, the PNA is always evolving and adapting with everyone’s contributions.
Photos: Mariana Sedge | Sul Informação
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