Audience prioritizes financing and combating precariousness in Culture

Plateia – Association of Performing Arts Professionals, chose this week the increase in funding and the fight against precariousness as priorities in the dialogue with the future Minister of Culture, Dalila Rodrigues, said leader Amarílis Felizes.

“We highlight two priorities: one of them has to do with our area of ​​intervention, with the continued increase in funding for independent artistic activities, and also the improvement of competition programs”, said Amarílis Felizes.

The other “big pillar” for the association “is the fight against precariousness in the sector”, and “it is very important to start with the public institutions themselves”.

“We are available and we hope to dialogue with this Government, with the new minister”, said the leader of Plateia, which this year celebrates 20 years of existence, representing around 300 workers and more than 100 structures in the cultural sector.

Another of Plateia’s demands is related to the Statute of Professionals in the Area of ​​Culture, whose changes the association considers “were not enough”.

“At the moment, part of the special social protection system is intended for only a portion of cultural workers; It is not really suitable for the working methods of some of the people who work in the sector, who are the most fragile, who work most intermittently”, considered Amarílis Felizes.

Currently, the statute “is only intended for self-employed workers and people with very short contracts, leaving many people out”.

“The modality is still not in tune with what really protects those who work in the area, and which often combines different types: dependent work, independent work. All of this should be contributing to social protection and at the moment it is not”, she detailed.

Thus, Plateia intends to “continue discussing what the status should really be for workers in the sector”, whose demands from the association date back to 2019.

As for funding from the Directorate-General for the Arts, “it is important to continue and increase the rate of growth of these support funds, and even the diversification of support, and then it is very important that there is also predictability”, he stressed, speaking of delays in the declaration annual and competitions with delayed results.

“DGArtes also needs to reinforce its resources and staff”, highlighted Amarílis Felizes, but “above all, the increase in funding is fundamental”.

For the leader of Plateia, in Portugal there is still “a very incipient cultural offer and a territory where there are many territorial inequalities” in this aspect.

“On the other hand, we also have an artistic fabric, proposals and cultural projects that are increasingly interesting, and people that are increasingly qualified and prepared, so it is very important not to waste this potential”, he considered.

For the Plateia leader, “Culture and the Arts are a very important thing for the country, for the people, and so it is important to invest in this”, remembering that “in the PSD’s electoral program there is this commitment to continue increasing funds for Culture”.

“We don’t know exactly what. Obviously it is important to know in what way”, he pointed out, also recalling that “there is a budget surplus”, so “there is nothing to believe” that such an increase “will not happen”.

Art historian Dalila Rodrigues, nominated for Minister of Culture in the next XXIV Constitutional Government, director of the Mosteiros dos Jerónimos and Torre de Belém since 2019, has been a defender of patronage and the autonomy of museums.

With a PhD in Art History from the University of Coimbra, Dalila Rodrigues is a coordinating professor at the Higher School of Education at the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu and a guest professor at the College of Arts at the University of Coimbra.