The declaration of the Ibero-American Conference on Political Culture for Youth and Childhood (held in Bogota, Colombia in 2000), established that creativity and access to cultural activity supported the acceptance of diversity and strengthened the process of democratision. In Argentina, where there is currently enormous lack of confidence in state institutions responsible for public welfare, we at Crear Vale la Pena are pursuing programmes that put art at the heart of democratic practice and as a potent way of integrating people in society.
We are convinced that art is as vital as food, education and employment because of its power to transform individual lives, develop a sense of community and build citizenship. As an organisation, we seek to establish projects that reinforce other programmes of social inclusion and integration but give value to the processes involved in non-formal education, artistic production and community based social organisation. Our objectives are to consolidate a model of social development that contributes to the quality of life of the people who live inside and outside poor neighbourhoods (barrios), in order to let the participants project themselves individually and collectively, using arts and cultural values as a motivation to improve social life.
During the last ten years, the Foundation has established Community Cultural Centres in three barrios: La Cava, Baja Boulogne and San Roque - where the arts programmes take place. There are places for 800 people, 78 workshop programmes where the participants can have training as teachers, or take part in artistic, technical, administrative programmes as well as in how to work in community cultural development.
We have developed these community cultural centres as open, many faceted and pluralist places where participants can take many different roles and are supported in personal and professional development using their individual interests and abilities as the basis for their motivation. The centres give opportunities for creativity and equality, inviting young people who live in poverty to take responsibility for their creations and promoting them in the wider community.
What are the problems we face?
In short, poverty and exclusion. Poverty is an economic problem but exclusion is an individual and social state that far outweighs the material aspects of poverty. It wears away little by little all the bases where a socially valued identity is supported, until the person turns into an excluded identity who has lost her/his reputation or self worth. The Argentinian crisis of recent years has weakened the role of culture as a motivation for our social life, while the official institutions devoted to promote the arts are devalued as vanguard spaces for economic and social development.
Increase in Inequality
In Argentina, between 1990 and 1999, both the gross domestic product and the gap between the rich and poor increased by 57%. The inequality index between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% across the country is 23.7%.
There are nine and a half million young people aged 15 - 29. 21.6% are unemployed, 13.2% neither work nor study and 31% of them live in poverty. A quarter of the two million young people living in the capital and greater Buenos Aires have no formal education and the unemployment rate amongst young people stands at 50%. For those who do have jobs there is little stability in their employment.
Art and social organisation program
Our Art and Social Organisation programme supports social transformation and democratic participation through the education, artistic production and promotion of cultural community centres.
Crear Vale la Pena considers democratic action as a political practice inside the organisation: the students and teachers who participate in artistic workshops willingly join the management teams in each cultural community centre. From there they commit themselves to follow the principles of the overall project. The aim is that the people in 'barrios' manage their own Centre autonomously and to integrate it to a cultural circuit understood as a 'solidarity net.' This is the strongest principle of community empowerment.
This program works on three specific areas:
Education
The Education Area has two programmes: 'Basic Education' and 'Professional Education.' Both of them are undertaken in weekly workshops, advanced workshops and seminars based on a method, which involves participation and reflection. That is how we give students the means to know different languages and ways of expression.
The 'Basic Education Programme' focuses on general and introductory training in the performing and visual arts.
The 'Professional Education Programme' works with students advanced in each subject, who are interested in becoming teachers, artists, and art technicians (sound and lighting). We also offer administration and management courses to assist people to become social - cultural entrepreneurs.
In weekly workshops at the Crear Vale la Pena Cultural Community Centres, we work to strengthen skills and give responsibility, as a powerful means to generate integration and build autonomous and sustainable community organisations.
The objective is that young people work with and for the community, project themselves individually and collectively, revalue the idea of commitment, the feeling of belonging and reinforce values such as solidarity, civic participation and responsibility.
The 'Education' for trainers or teachers guarantees the continuity, growth and consolidation of the programme.
Artistic Production
Our Artistic production objectives are to:
- support young professionals and promote a high profile for artists formed in Crear Vale la Pena
- spread the artistic production of socially excluded people
- create meeting and communication spaces among people belonging to different places and with different social conditions
- expose and spread the results and achievements of the institution and the people who participate in it
- link Crear Vale la Pena and its members to other relevant institutions in the world of artistic, cultural and social development, as a strategy to eliminate exclusion and to raise the value of the role of art as civic participation training
- develop genuine resources by the production of artistic shows, services and products.
Social Organisation:
Cultural Community Centres
Cultural Community centres are the places where workshops take place and social-cultural promoters, teachers, artist and technicians are trained. They aim to become 'the place' for meeting, participation, creation and individual projection. They are the institutional spaces for empowering disadvantaged people.
Cultural Community Centres aim to be self-managed. Local people are trained for that purpose as social and cultural promoters.
Crear Vale la Pena encourages the centres to recover the value of art and culture as a motivation-power of social life and to improve the quality of life of those who live inside poor neighbourhoods, thus contributing to build a more equal and democratic society.
Cultural Community Centres are inter-connected through thematic committees related to education, artistic production, infrastructure, social organisation, resources and communication development where the social -cultural promoters participate.
This organisation method links the Crear Vale la Pena global action with the local strategy implemented by each centre, making the interconnection among the work areas easier and guarantees both the program's integrity and the coherency of its development as a participating structure.
Crear Vale la Pena can be contacted at Bogado 571 piso 1 (BI609IFC), Boulogne Prov. De Buenos Aires, Argentina. Telephone 00 54 11 4700 1600/4708 0742 or info@crearvalepena.org.ar