Culture Points: the most outstanding expression of transformation

“Enchantment is the stream for a magical world that only art and culture can provide. It is getting out of the brutality of the objectification of everything and of all. The Living Culture is a public policy of social mobilization and enchantment.”

“The world is disenchanted, artificialized, people got harsher. The world needs to be reenchanted. Gil’s magic makes him a natural enchanter.”
Célio Turino, Programs and Projects Secretary at the Ministry of Culture (2004–2010)

In his inaugural address as minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil made use of a metaphor to represent the line of work that would brand his term as a minister: the “anthropological do-in”. The do-in is an oriental technique of body massage.

It consists in pressure over body points, stimulating them in order to get obstructed energy to flow, bringing harmony and balance. For Gil, the country’s cultural diversity had limitations to be accessed and it was fundamental to get Brazil to know itself better.

Knowledge to rethink its own identity over that moment of deep transformations the country was going through. Culture Points were the most outstanding expression in the changing of public policies of culture conducted during Gilberto Gil’s term.

Created in 2004, the project was part of the Living Culture Program, ran by the Secretary of Cultural Projects from the Ministry of Culture (MinC, in the Portuguese acronym), under the direction of Célio Turino. The Culture Points were the State’s acknowledgement of civil societies organizations dedicated to culture:

Cultural groups, quilombo communities, indigenous, popular rhythms and dances such as samba schools, maracatus, cirandas, quadrilhas, capoeira or manifestations of cultural and religious nature.

Aiming at these organizations, MinC had set public announcements for direct funding of their activities and purchasing of equipment in order to record and promote such activities.

In 2010, the Living Culture Program had benefited direct and indirectly about nine million Brazilians through 3.500 Culture Points in 1,100 cities in all regions of the country.

The building of the Living Culture Program relied on the articulated work of minister Gilberto Gil and Célio Turino, who took on the then Secretariat of Programs and Projects and ran the implementation of the Bases of Support for Culture [BACs, in the Portuguese acronym].

The BACs were already considered the spine of the Ministry’s cultural policy at that time, but issues with their implementation, during the first year of Gilberto Gil’s term, unlocked a crisis that almost led to his departure from the Ministry.

In a conversation between the minister, MinC executive secretary Juca Ferreira, and special advisor Manoel Rangel at the minister’s office, Rangel suggested a name for the Secretariat: Célio Turino. Célio had been secretary of Culture of Campinas City between 1990 and 1992.

There, he implemented a very similar policy to that intended by Gilberto Gil with the BACs, the Houses of Culture. From Célio Turino’s interviews to his appointment, two months elapsed, from March to May 2004. Célio himself thought “it wouldn’t happen.”

Just then, Juca Ferreira, in a meeting at the São Paulo Pinacoteca, announced he was going to be the next secretary and had to report for duty in Brasília in two days. Turino, up to that point, had not yet met Gilberto Gil and all procedures for nomination had been intermediated by Juca.

When he arrived at the Secretariat, Célio felt compelled to rethink the program as it was designed. The BACs were designed to be physical structures built by the Ministry in the poor neighborhoods within large Brazilian cities. His major concern was how the occupation of these structures would be.

Who is going to pay the light bills? Who is going to run it? It was not possible to think that simply building of a house like that would be enough to make people occupy that equipment.

For Célio, the most important thing was to look into the “software” (the people) rather than into the “hardware” (structures). The secretary, on the occasion with the help of Sérgio Xavier, Isaura Botelho, Maristela Delbenest, Paulo Miguez, Letícia Schwartz, Emília Nascimento e Cláudio Prado…

… redesigned the project focusing on a network of cultural agents. The Living Culture Program was being born.

Carrying the new proposal under his arms, Célio Turino was finally introduced to Gilberto Gil. Gil had read the proposal and liked it very much. After a long conversation with Célio, Gil said: “Interesting! Instead of looking at the structure, you looked at the flow. And flow is life.”

After his proposal had conquered Gil, him and Célio presented the program for then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who made it one of the priorities of his administration. The only remark by Lula was:

He ask for the Program to be extended to Brazilians living abroad. According to the president, he, as a migrant, knew the pain of living away from one’s home. The Culture Points would be a base for away from home Brazilians to reconnect.

In the following years, Living Culture would be the only program in the cultural area to figure in the election manifest—in addition to becoming part of government’s strategy and be added to the Multiannual Plan [PPA, in the Portuguese acronym].

After getting the greenlight to implement the Living Culture Program, Turino and his team prepared the first Culture Points public announcement in 2004. There was a selection of 170 units in this first phase. The Secretariat budget was a little over 11 million reais.

It was a small sum for a federal entity. Before MinC, Célio had been director of the Leisure Programs Department at the Sports Secretary of São Paulo City. The amount he had to manage there was the same as he had in the federal government, except that one was destined for a city only and the other for a whole country.

For the next year, Turino managed to talk congressmen from the Education Commission of the Deputy House into granting a budget amendment of 55 million, which raised the Secretariat’s budget to 66 million.

In 2005, a new public announcement for Culture Points received 2.500 applications and selected 600 among them. The challenges to run a program like Living Culture were huge. The lack of structure in a ministry with low prestige among the all ministries demanded:

Creativity, charisma and a many management skills from both Gil and Célio. Turino recalls that getting the budget amendment was the easy part. The challenge rested in executing that budget. In the federal government, available money does not always is entirely spent.

As it is a public resource, there are administrative rules to ensure legality of payments. In that sense, MinC’s management had unique conditions that lead to the success of those initiatives. Gilberto Gil has a degree in business management.

He used his skills to apply innovative management methods. Célio Turino, with his previous experience in public service, knew all about administrative procedures and rules to execute the budget.

However, as much as Gil and Célio had the skills to be technocrats of the administrative law, on the other hand they also had within themselves poetry, philosophy, and sensitivity for cultural subjects.

Célio and Gil “hacked” the State’s heavy and square gear, in order to innovate in public management in a way that had never been tried before. Célio believes the biggest talent of Gil was your capacity to gather people, build an identity and complicity with only one purpose.

In the Ministry of Culture, Gil gathered the most heterogeneous team of all ministries, from Tropicália hippie-like people to green environmentalists, Workers’ Party people, communists, all in a broad spectrum both ideological and political.

This diversity elevated MinC to one of the most acknowledged ministries in the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Célio and Gil built their relationship while the Program was being consolidated. Their closeness was also due to the affection that Gil had towards Living Culture, which led him to get on the road to give voice to Brazilians in several places in Brazil and around the world.

Gil visited many Culture Points during his term. For the Points welcoming him, it was a full accomplishment being heard and acknowledged for their importance in the Brazilian cultural matrix.

In one of these travels, Célio and Gil went off to visit the Culture Point of the Ashaninka people, in the town of Marechal Thaumaturgo, Acre state, close to the Peruvian border. Getting there was an adventure.

Célio recalls it took three flights and a couple more hours in a small riverboat, motor driven, taking them through Amazônia river up to the indigenous village. In addition to visiting project’s installation, the Ministry of Culture delegation also joined a confraternization in the village.

On the occasion, Gil was honored by the performance of an indigenous song performed by tribe leader Antônio Ashaninka. Gil, then, returned the homage by playing the song Banda Larga Cordel.

In 2005, Gil and Turino traveled together to oversee the implementation of the Culture Points in the United States. On that occasion, they visited Brazilian culture associations, such as Cultura Abadá-Capoeira, in San Francisco.

In that same trip, Célio and Gil visited Danbury, Connecticut, a city in which 20% of inhabitants are Brazilians.

Apart from the Culture Points, Célio and Gil joined several events and conferences in Berkeley, Columbia, and Harvard Universities about Public Policies on Contemporary Brazilian Culture and on Cultural Policies and Social Inclusion in Brazil.

The travel schedule fueling a common passion would contribute to enlarge the complicity and affection between Gil and Célio.

The Living Culture Program only became the only of its kind in its essence because it bet on the building of an emancipatory vision of culture, grounded on three core pillars: autonomy, protagonism and empowerment. It was a policy built from the bottom up.

In that, MinC had positioned itself as a listener of the voices echoing around Brazil and abroad. By recognizing the cultural initiatives happening across the country and giving them structure so they could flow, without imposing its own view of culture, MinC had strengthened the autonomy of those organizations.

The protagonism and empowerment were, in part, results of such autonomy, and yet have grown even stronger by connecting these initiatives in a huge process of network articulation. The Living Culture Program had five strategic actions:

Culture Points, Living Culture Agents, Living School, Griô Action, and Digital Culture. The Culture Points were the network links through which different actors flow and crash in order to produce new initiatives.

The Living Culture Agents were young people to whom an artistic residency grant was paid in the Culture Points. The Living Schools were the connection between Culture Points and schools. The Griô action recognized masters of popular wisdom, who, also through the Culture Points

...could convey their ancestor knowledge for the younger. Lastly, the Digital Culture would offer a platform with tools for documentation and promotion of the knowledge circulating within the different strategic actions.

As per Célio Turino, “the Living Culture was a macro networking connecting the micro networks of the Points.” The Digital Culture was the Living Culture action that brought in it not only the new technologies to be appropriated by the Points.

But also the philosophy of free knowledge for network articulation. Designed for Claudio Prado, a friend of Gil back from the times of Wight Island in London and Águas Claras (in Iacanga – São Paulo), the Digital Culture was the fueling of utopia of a new sight over culture.

The materialization of the action would happen through the multimedia kit for audiovisual production that each Culture Point would receive when joining the network. Using a free software for content editing and publishing, the Digital Culture was the spark of an unlikely relationship up to that point:

The fusion of high technology with the knowledge of traditional communities. That was an ingenious idea, as audiovisual media was the best tool to register traditional knowledge, based on orality.

Gil had sung this subject in his songs Pela Internet and Banda Larga Cordel. The Living Culture Program gave materiality to that lyrical utopia.

His actions ahead of the Ministry of Culture had transformed the country’s cultural life, despite the limited resources issues that the office has always suffered from. Gil had demonstrated, with creativity and Brazilianness, how resources scarcity could be overcome.

Or better yet, that transformative ideas do not always require huge resources. In that sense, Gil’s magnitude is amazing. Even though he is internationally known stage artist, who have made his career by selling his work as a musician…

… he managed to understand that culture is not a shelf product, but rather a process of social enchantment. In the launching of the Culture Points Program, Gil said:

Two years later, at Teia, which took place in the Bienal Pavilion in São Paulo, under the theme “Come see yourself and be seen,” when seeing all the diversity of Culture Points coloring an elitist space like the Bienal, Gil burst into tears during the press conference.

Maybe not even the enchanter could have known how strong his enchantment was. The utopia had come true, and that would forever change our understanding of identity, or Brazilian cultural identities.