Brazil to create institute for cultural exchanges with other countries
Brazil is set to create next year a cultural institute similar to Germany’s Goethe Institute and Spain’s Instituto Cervantes to promote cultural projects with other nations, Culture Secretary Roberto Alvim announced after meeting with Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo yesterday (Dec. 19).
Among the countries with potential to carry out such initiatives alongside Brazil are Hungry, Austria, Poland, Croatia, Greece, and Spain, Alvim noted, adding that the Brazilian institute will be linked to both culture and foreign relations, taking “art overseas, and also bringing art and culture from other countries to Brazil.”
Compared to 2019, Roberto Alvim pointed out, “2020 will be amazing.” This year was harmed by “a number of budget restrictions,” he went on to say. The year will be marked by a number of tender offers with a focus on cultural programs. “The collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Relations is within this scope.”
The government is said to be considering ways to unfreeze budget in order to have “more funding available for programs that accessibly bring art and culture to Brazilians.”
“I’m talking about training and production programs, the circulation of works—offered to the population free of charge, branching out to municipalities,” he declared.
The government, he also declared, is bringing about conditions to benefit all portions of the Brazilian population with the cultural products in offer. “Our goal is to create conditions outside of the cliques that were formed before over the last 20 years. There was a sector thoroughly dominated by a certain elite that wouldn’t open up for the majority of the Brazilian people. Now is the time to bring it out and rid it of ideological connections and dissemination,” the official declared.
