The president of the Camões Institute, Florbela Paraíba, said today in Maputo that the Procultura project has, over seven years, changed the lives of thousands of people in Portuguese-speaking African countries and Timor-Leste who want to work in the cultural sector.
“There was training, there was space for creation — artists need calm spaces to create, to learn, to grow together,” said the Camões president, on the sidelines of the presentation of results and closing ceremony of Procultura, which launched on April 1, 2019 and ends on March 31.
“It allowed them to internationalise their careers. More than 80% achieved international and regional visibility, which is very positive, and more than 60% now have careers in the sector. The cultural sector is always very volatile in terms of employability, and keeping these people in a sector where they want to work, where they dream of expressing themselves, is very important. So the results are very, very positive,” she said.
The programme supported, over this period — implemented by the Camões Institute with backing from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and European Union funding of €19 million — thousands of students, teachers, artists and cultural entrepreneurs in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, as well as Timor-Leste, in the areas of music, performing arts and children’s and youth literature.
“It involved more than 1,800 students and artists, and had a very wide-ranging impact in music, children’s and youth literature production, and the performing arts. The goal was to create greater income and employment opportunities for these professionals — both those who perform in front of the camera and those behind it, such as sound technicians, lighting technicians and set designers — in order to open up space for cultural and artistic creation,” Florbela Paraíba said.
She also highlighted the importance of the training provided to these professionals, as well as the various artistic residencies and international mobility opportunities, including exchanges between higher education and secondary education institutions in these countries, which were able to replicate the knowledge gained.
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Procultura, which will continue as Procultura II with €10 million from the EU — announced today — funded the launch of technical and higher education courses in the cultural field, activities by 108 organisations, the majority non-profit, and higher education scholarships, with 106 students completing their courses. It also led to the creation of more than 600 jobs, artistic residencies for 50 artists, and academic mobility between 11 Portuguese universities and nine universities in these countries.
“We trained many teachers, we trained many students, raising their awareness. And ultimately, this is a project that embodies what we do at Camões: the culture-development nexus, the possibility of growth and co-creation in which we and the institutions of these countries act as partners, nurturing dreams and providing equal opportunities for all,” Florbela Paraíba said.
“Culture is not residual — culture is investment, it is the economy, it is the promotion of diversity, of national cohesion, of community ownership, and above all it is a factor of identity and of the future for all those involved,” she stressed.
The Camões Institute will implement Procultura II, whose conceptual framework is already being designed
