At the beginning of 2013, in the framework of the Juntxs Alliance, a group of cultural organizations and networks from Latin America decided to create a political advocacy group that would address issues of transparency, participation, and accountability in public policies related to the arts and cultural sectors.
The need to work on this theme had to do with the need to “open” the government of culture to the participation of citizens and cultural organizations, not only in terms of specific themes, but in general terms: considering participation as a key factor un cultural democratization in the region. The new axis was build from the direct experience of organizations that were already participating in advocacy projects.
With the objetives of giving greater coherence to this work from a critical perspective and pertinent to the Latin American context, the Working Group formed at the beginning by TELARTES (Bolivia), Culturaperu.org (now SOLAR, Perú), Fora do Eixo (Brasil) and the South American Network of Dance (RSD), a number of actions and processes were promoted during 2013 and 2014 towards the consolidation of what was referred to as AbreCultura: an axis for advocacy in public policies, focused on issues of transparency, participation and public accountability in the cultural sectors.
The first project AbreCultura developed was a Report that (1) described the importance of this kind of advocacy in the arts and cultural sectors of Latin America and (2) presented 2 case studies including the experiences of TELARTES (Bolivia) and the Más Cultura Network (Peru) on advocacy and civic participation, and (3) provided a preliminary map of experience in civic advocacy on cultural policies conducted by cultural organizations and networks in the region, considering this is an area that requires research and development in the future.
The document constituted a first step towards greater knowledge generation and exchange between organizations in the region. You can download the Report below.
