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About a hundred cultural agents have gathered this afternoon near the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, in Lisbon, for “a”to drink“Empty glass”, alluding to the lack of response of the Government to the unprecedented crisis that the artistic sector is going through.
Organized by the civic platform Convergence for Culture, the initiative a to drink for culture It was attended by various personalities of the arts, among which is the actor Ruy de Carvalho, who promoted “a toast to the ignorance of the minister.”
“Everything that surrounds us is culture, so we have to have a minister equal to the culture we deserve, so no, so I say ‘ah, minister, what a sadness, wake up for life, don’t die, live,'” he said. . Ruy de Carvalho, 93, remembers his 78-year acting career in which he never had a Minister of Culture “so bad.”
In the protest at the Ministry of Culture (MC), based in the National Palace of Ajuda, workers from the sector raised a banner with the phrase “without culture, no future“They toasted empty glasses and made themselves heard:” We are all culture. “
As part of this protest initiative, the Convergence for Culture platform presented a public statement, addressed to the Prime Minister, considering that António Costa “is very misinformed in relation to Culture” and indicating that the greatest gap corresponds to the “lack of seriousness, ethics and transparency ”in the adoption of the measures presented by the Government.
“In reality, they were nothing more than a utopia, which is very good in portraits, but which does not correspond to the harsh reality in which their fellow citizens live,” the public statement advances, stating that “the agents of the sector Culture does not want handouts or subsidies, they want a sustainable and sustained sector ”.
Last Friday, the Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, made herself available to receive the platform that scheduled the protest, despite the fact that the manifesto in which her claims are made was not addressed to her, “certainly by mistake.”
In response to Lusa, an MC source said that “the request for a hearing came today [esta quarta-feira] at lunchtime and that a meeting will be scheduled accordingly. “
At the end of July, on the sidelines of the presentation session of a set of contemporary art works acquired by the State, the Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, when confronted with the information that an informal group supported more than 150 workers weekly sector in difficulties, refused to respond and invited journalists to “a to drink by the end of the afternoon “.
Two weeks ago, the Convergence for Culture platform released a manifesto, originating from what it defines as “lack of response from the guardianship to the various requests” made since March, the month in which the sector had to stop for the covid-19 pandemic.
In the manifesto, the platform presented ten proposals “that together represent some 30 measures, with solutions” that it believes can “solve the immediate problems of workers” in the sector, “if implemented.”
In response, the CM considered that these claims are “redundant” and “even untimely”, since “most of them are already the target of a wide range of very specific measures adopted and under way.”
As an example, the tutela recalls that, with regard to the reorganization of Culture workers / structural reform of Social Security and Review and classification of Culture professions, an inter-ministerial working group was created to study working conditions and contributory careers for interpreters, authors and technicians.
This morning, in a statement, the MC also recalled that the lines of support for artistic entities and the adaptation of spaces to the measures to prevent the contagion of covid-19 are open until Friday, as well as the line of social support, in addition to the support granted by Social Security to self-employed workers in the Culture area, aimed at “artists, authors, technicians and other cultural professionals”, with a global value of more than 38 million euros.
The guardianship recalled that the exceptional lines of support of the Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual are also open, for the financing of projects already supported, for production and festivals, whose 2020 editions have been suspended, postponed or canceled. The total amount available is 3.5 million euros.
