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News from Portugal
Under the banner “We are not stoped. We are ON” the Portuguese Government has been slowly but timely announcing some exceptional support measures for the cultural sector – alongside generic measures launched beforehand for independent works and families with children at home.“Culture creates a million Euros emergency support line”, 20.03.2020
The Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, said that the Government will create an emergency support line, worth one million Euros, to help artists and organisations in a situation of greater vulnerability and without any financial support. This line is created after the declaration of national state of emergency and will be financed through the Cultural Development Fund, aiming to support artistic creation in the performing arts, visual arts and interdisciplinary approaches of all entities who do not receive any financial support and are therefore in a situation of greater vulnerability at this time of pandemic, caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. «We know that, at this moment, projects cannot be realized. The goal is to be able, by the end of 2020, to carry out the projects that will now be supported in this line », declared Graça Fonseca. This funding line will only start operating after procedures have been defined with representatives of the sector. The artistic structures considered eligible and that were left out of the last competitions for financial support from the Directorate-General for the Arts (DGArtes) may also use this line of emergency.As for DGArtes’ grantees, there is the guarantee of maintaining the total budget of three Million Euros, already included in the State Budget for 2020. There was also an appeal to city authorities in order to implement strategies that favour, whenever possible, the postponement and rescheduling of the shows to the detriment of their cancellation.The Ministry also launched a sector specific platform gathering all news and acting as a gateway to all info: https://www.culturacovid19.gov.pt
Despite some good news coming from Central Government, the actual procedures and timings for implementation of these measures are yet to be known.
On the civil society level, artists and cultural organisations platforms have been launching surveys to enquiry the state of affairs of the sector regarding financial, social and working conditions.
