Plateia – Association of Performing Arts Professionals, today chose increased funding and the fight against precariousness as priorities in the dialog with the future Minister of Culture, Dalila Rodrigues, leader Amarílis Felizes told Lusa.
“We have identified two priorities: one of them has to do with our area of intervention, with continuing to increase funding for independent artistic activities, and also improving tender programs,” Amarílis Felizes told Lusa.
The other “great 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 talk to this government, to the new minister,” said the leader of Plateia, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary, representing around 300 workers and more than 100 organizations in the cultural sector.
Another of Plateia’s demands is related to the Statute for Professionals in the Cultural Area, whose changes the association considers to be “not enough”.
“At the moment it’s only intended for part of the special social protection system for cultural workers; it’s not really suited to the working methods of part of the people who work in the sector, who are the most fragile, who work more intermittently,” said Amarílis Felizes.
Currently, the status “is only intended for self-employed workers and people with very short-term contracts, leaving a lot of people out”.
“The modality is still not tuned to what would really protect those who work in the area, and who often accumulate various types: dependent work, self-employment. All of this should be contributing to social protection and at the moment it isn’t,” he said.
Plateia therefore intends to “continue discussing what the statute for workers in the sector should really be”, the association’s demands for which date back to 2019.
As for funding from the Directorate-General for the Arts, “it’s important to continue and increase the rate of growth of these grants, and even the diversification of grants, and then it’s very important that there is also predictability,” he said, speaking of delays in the annual declaration and tenders with delayed results.
“DGArtes also needs more resources and staff,” said Amarílis Felizes, but “above all, an increase in funding is essential.”
For Plateia’s leader, Portugal still has “a very incipient cultural offer and a territory where there are many territorial inequalities” in this respect.
“On the other hand, we also have an artistic fabric, increasingly interesting cultural proposals and projects, and increasingly qualified and prepared people, so it’s very important not to waste this potential,” he said.
For the Plateia leader, “culture and the arts are very important for the country, for people, and so it’s important to invest in them”, recalling that “in the PSD’s electoral program there is this commitment to continue increasing the funds for culture”.
“We don’t know exactly in what. Obviously it’s important to know in what way,” he pointed out, also recalling that “there is a budget surplus”, so “there’s nothing to believe” that such an increase “won’t happen”.
Art historian Dalila Rodrigues, nominated for Minister of Culture in the next XXIV Constitutional Government, director of the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower since 2019, has been an advocate 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 School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu and a visiting professor at the College of Arts of the University of Coimbra.
