Chamada de trabalhos – segunda edição de 2022

Community-based cultural movements and policies

Responsible Editors:

Juan Ignacio Brizuela (USP and ODC)

Sharine Machado Cabral Melo (USP and Funarte)

Néstor García Canclini (UAM-Iztapalapa)

If modern thought concentrated the exercise of politics in States, the last decades have highlighted the fundamental role of other social actors, such as private associations, cultural community groups, and multinational companies. Thus, debates about policies for culture and the arts have gained new dimensions by including the interactions between governments, social groups, and institutions that (apparently) did not intervene in the area. New questions arise as digital communication advances, penetrating a significant part of the social fabric. The expansion of access to the tools of production and dissemination of content coexists with the growing power of large corporations, the formation of social bubbles, and the proliferation of false news and misinformation.

Are digital platforms a new design of cultural institutionality? Does streaming replace cultural consumption and forms of face-to-face sociability in public places? What is happening in local culture points and community-based live culture, beyond Brazilian borders? Sociocultural changes that began before the Covid-19 pandemic have accelerated since March 2020. At the same time, these global phenomena have made it possible to reconsider community and territorial processes of multiple, diverse cultural institutionalization, with actions of social movements centered on citizen participation.

In this context, the proposal of this dossier is to reflect on territorial experiences of movements and initiatives of community-based cultural politics - inside and outside Latin America - to make visible other ways of doing cultural policy, beyond the state dimension, often preceding or being parallel to paradigmatic (and emerging) public policies in Brazil, such as the Pontos de Cultura and the Cultura Viva movement.

Some themes that are being debated in various forums of thought and action - and that will be welcome in the form of articles, essays and critiques - are the following: childhood and youth in community movements; community cultural management and governance; good living, Abya Yala and community health; community cultures, cultural rights and diversities; cultural and community heritage; solidarity economy and multinational private funding; participatory methodologies for community research; data elaboration and systematization of community indicators; among others.