The Ministry of Culture has entered into various agreements with other ministries, in order that inter-ministerial co-operation may be of real benefit to the government’s policy action in the cultural field. The main examples are:
- The National Reading Plan (Plano Nacional de Leitura – PNL), launched in 2007 with the aim of increasing Portuguese literacy levels, is a government initiative, under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, in co-operation with the Ministry of Culture and the Office of the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs. In the first phase of this Plan (2007-2011) the Education and Culture ministries have carried out joint action and training programmes.
- The Directorate-General for the Arts, supervised by the Ministry of Culture, and the Camões Institute (Instituto Camões), jointly supervised by the ministers of Foreign Affairs and Culture, adopted a memorandum of Understanding in 2008, the aims of which were to ensure funding for Portuguese artists and foreign artists resident in Portugal to take part in events taking place outside Portugal, as well as to provide support to foreign organisations established in the international art world which might wish to invite Portuguese artists or bodies to take part in international events.
- In November 2010, the Foreign Affairs and Culture ministries signed an agreement aimed at strengthening institutional co-operation between the Camões Institute and the Ministry of Culture’s Office of Planning, Strategy, Assessment and International Relations (GPEARI). The aim of this partnership is to co-ordinate the actions of the two organisations.
Collaboration between the ministries of Culture and Education has taken the form of joint project and working groups to develop linkages between cultural and educational polices – particularly in respect of measures to encourage participation in cultural life. The results of these attempts at coordinated action have been disappointing.
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