New Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes, making her debut in politics, will use task forces to present quick results and reopen a channel of dialogue between the government and an area that employs 5.5 million Brazilians who are after a Pandemic and Jair Bolsonaro’s four years as President of the Republic.
In 2022, Union investment in the artistic sector decreased by 63% compared to 2018.
What will Margareth Menezes do? The new minister spoke to Splash. “The sector has been in decline for many years, a situation greatly exacerbated by the health crisis. The artists’ group was one of the hardest hit. The Ministry of Culture must be a facilitator of investment and promotion of the sector “
But what can the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) do for a sector in crisis? Transition team members consulted by syringes List five goals for the first year of new leadership:
- Unlock resources from the laws of Paulo Gustavo and Aldir Blanc
- Resumption of dialogue with artists and cultural collectives
- Create task forces to deliver quick results
- Optimize the distribution of Rouanet Law resources
- Return to work with NGOs
pessimistic diagnosis. The department she will lead was discontinued in 2019 and became a secretariat of the Ministries of Citizenship and Tourism. Since the end of the MinC (Ministry of Culture), the Fundo Nacional de Cultura, the main government funding mechanism for culture, has had its budget reduced by 91%.
The cut made it impossible for the Secretariat to conduct activities, a fact that deepened Bolsonaro’s unpopularity among culture and arts professionals.
- The participation of the cultural sector in the economy ranged between 1.2% and 2.7% of GDP in 2019
- The sector lost BRL 69 billion from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic
- In 2020, sales went to zero
Margareth Menezes’ office estimates that the sector will not return to 2019 prosperity levels until sometime in 2023.
The scenario is still uncertain given the omission and ineffectiveness of the Bolsonaro government in the region
Office of Margareth Menezes
Rouanet law: regional redemocratization. The new MinC is preparing a report to guide the distribution of Rouanet Law funds by states. In 2022, there were 2,200 projects approved by the Bolsonaro government to raise funds. of this sum 1,300 are from the Southeast (58%).
Only 254 are from the Northeast and North (12%), centers of the country’s Black and Indigenous cultures.
- Southeast: 58%
- South: 25%
- Northeast: 10%
- Midwest: 5%
- North: 2%
The government Bolsonaro approved 12,800 cultural projects to receive funds via Rouanet. In In 20152018 there were 20.8 thousand beneficiaries.
- 2015: 5.4 thousand
- 2016: 4.5 thousand
- 2017: 5.4 thousand
- 2018: 5.5 thousand
- 2019: 3.8 thousand
- 2020: 4.2 thousand
- 2021: 2.7 thousand
- 2022: 2.6 thousand
Aldir Blanc 2 and Paulo Gustavo. In her management, Margareth Menezes will have the duty of implementing the two laws that have been attacked by the Bolsonaro government. The MinC is expected to accumulate a budget of around BRL 10 billion in 2023.
- BRL 5.7 billion of the annual budget
- BRL 3.9 billion from the Paulo Gustavo law
- BRL 3 billion from the Aldir Blanc 2 Act
- BRL 1.2 billion from Condecine (contribution to the development of the national film industry)
The Paulo Gustavo Law provides BRL 3.9 billion for cultural sector workers affected by the pandemic. In this way, funds from the National Cultural Fund are to be passed on to the culture secretariats of the federal states, federal districts and municipalities. Aldir Blanc 2 will enable BRL 3 billion in annual remittances until 2027 to stimulate projects and actions in the sector.
The new minister is one of the 100 most influential black people in the world. Criticized for a lack of political experience, Margareth Menezes founded the NGO Fábrica Cultural in 2004, which promotes technical and vocational training to promote production chains, especially in the cultural sector.
She was awarded the Afropop Project, which aims to highlight black culture in the country, in 2007 by then Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil.
She was a theater actress in Bahia in the 1980s and represented Brazil in the 2002 TimorLeste Independence Celebration, which brought together lusophone singers, at an event attended by 250,000 people.
MinC will have task forces to present results at short notice. It is a strategy to circumvent the new minister’s lack of experience and to be able to resolve initial demands quickly. The groups are coordinated by the historian Márcio Tavares.
Tavares, head of culture at PT, will be the ministry’s executive secretary, number two in the portfolio. The team is completed by new secretaries for copyright, Marcos Souza, and for creative industries and cultural development, Henilton Menezes.
The new minister was due to meet artists, NGOs and cultural collectives later in January to resume dialogue with the category.