An example from Brazil

 

Although late in relation to Western countries, some decades have passed since the Brazilian market for the production, circulation and consumption of symbolic goods has gained a complexity that requires greater specialization from the professionals who work in it. However, even today, self-taught training within its "own cultural circles" plays an important role in the field of cultural organization and arts management. 

 

In the Brazilian case, the term cultural production is predominant to refer to the organizing culture, to the detriment of notions such as management, or even mediation, animation, promotion, agency of arts and culture, among others. Its use became official, in a way, with the institution of the Rouanet Law from 1995, which provided funds for art and culture and for the first tome recognized the intermediation of cultural projects, including financial gain, covering the elaboration of projects, fundraising, administration of cultural events, among other related activities. 

 

Alongside this movement the first two undergraduate courses in cultural production in Brazil were created, one in Bahia and the other in Rio de Janeiro. The denomination of cultural production became institutionally predominant, as well as the most usual way of self-nomination of professionals working in this area (Costa et al. 2010).

 

 

The Cultural Production Workshop is a mandatory curricular component of the undergraduate course in Communication with a specialization in Production in Communication and Culture, linked to the Communication Faculty of the Federal University of Bahia. The workshop is offered since 1996. In a pioneering way in Brazil, the course proposes to address the links between communication and culture. 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences permeate the formative role of our Workshops in different ways. Whether with regard to materials and methods, adapted for remote and online performance, or with regard to the themes covered in the proposed theoretical and practical activities. 

 

In the formative process, the Workshops constitute the practical experiences in production. This modality was implemented since the creation of the curriculum and has as a final result a cultural product prepared by the students, stipulated in the programs of the cultural disciplines and based on specific contents. The components are offered from the initial semesters, seeking to break with a tradition of segregation between the theoretical and practical content of undergraduate courses. In this modality, the role of the student is evident for the initiatives developed during the Workshops as an exercise of learning and for interaction with the external community. Through the realization of a cultural project, to the students should develop their ability to carry out cultural actions in practice, promoting initiation in their future professional area. 

 

Throughout each semester, the project is conducted in different groups. Each initiative can focus on a specific artistic or thematic area, based on joint discussions and deliberations. Some projects also bring up important contemporary issues, such as LGBTQIA+ culture and black culture. The program is diversified, involving dissemination, training and circulation actions.

 

Since 2011, when one of the authors started to teach the discipline on a regular basis, we have used online tools for the management of the course. Various platforms and social media on which students were most connected at that time were tested. Among others, a planning model was created, containing an action plan and a budget, to be completed throughout the semester. Team reports and an individual digital assessment were introduced, in which the performance of the student and the different groups is evaluated. 

 

Students are commonly divided into task specific teams, from pre-production to post-production of the projects as well as communication, funding and financial management, which normally varies from semester to semester. The coordination team can be highlighted or collegiate, composed of the coordinators of the other teams. As the proposal is created by the students themselves each semester, we have no way of predicting which teams will be created before commencing work collectively.

 

 

In the first half of 2020, the Cultural Production Workshop activities started in person as usual. However, as of March 18, 2020, all face-to-face activities at the Federal University of Bahia were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2020, the University started an academic semester on an extraordinary basis with the adoption of remote courses. It was up to the teachers, together with the decision-making bodies of each course, to define the curricular offer, considering in particular the possibility of adapting the activities proposed in each component to an online format.

 

Teachers were able to offer courses together, contributing to collective construction and dialogue about the process of adapting methods and content for remote education in a very adverse social situation. Therefore, considering previous experiences of collaboration and theoretical affinities, the authors of this article chose to offer the Cultural Production Workshop. Its practical character, instead of being limiting, suggested the possibility of experimenting with new possibilities of acting in the cultural field in the context of social distancing. After all, there was already a perception that the pandemic and its effects would still be felt over the next few years.

 

The proposal proved to be quite challenging in the first place regarding student adherence. Out of 30 students enrolled only eight finished. In addition to the difficulties imposed by the pandemic on students (problems with internet access, burden of taking care of children and family members, physical and mental health issues, need to supplement family income, shared use of computers, etc.), there were doubts regarding the possibility of learning from a non-face-to-face experience.

 

In the field of cultural production in particular, the impacts of the pandemic were being felt very early. The situation raised a series of questions that are difficult to answer and that were especially interesting for our students to discuss. How to carry out cultural activities without the possibility of gathering people? How to ensure secure protocols in case of face-to-face events? How to ensure a traditionally face-to-face experience in digital formats? How to guarantee the subsistence of professionals in the field in view of the expansion of the free offer of artistic content in digital formats? How to attract the public in the midst of this competition? In other words, it was not just a question of changing teaching methods and formats of exposure, but also of adapting the theoretical-critical content of the course, making it necessary to include discussion and permanent reflection on the pandemic from different perspectives: cultural policies and the economy of culture; financing and promotion; consumption and cultural habits; cultural work and precariousness etc .

 

The possibilities for carrying out the Cultural Project also needed to be reviewed and reexamined. In order to avoid the exposure of teachers and students, it was decided to be done online.  Regarding the methods and procedures adopted, as electronic tools for project management and communication with students were already used, the transposition of classroom teaching to remote education consisted of expanding their use. 

 

We observed, beforehand, a lesser engagement of students in the discussions about defining the project - a fact that we attribute not only to the reduction of the format possibilities and to the smaller number of participating students, but also to the more general problems faced by the students.

 

After brainstorming and jointly producing a mind map, we chose to hold three lives on literature with black authors from the state of Bahia. In addition to the novelty of the literature theme in the context of the course, the language focused art form allowed for an adaptation to an online format, ensuring the inhibition of the risks of face-to-face activities and the reduction of the possibility of technical problems, among others. 

 

The production stages of the project followed its course: first, the planning of actions, discussion of the name of the project, possible guests, among other issues. We continued with the invitation of authors to participate in the lives and with the creation of graphic pieces for dissemination on social media - steps commonly performed in face-to-face actions. A partnership was also established with a city bookstore to draw books as a promotional action.

 

A major differential in the realization of a remote event refers to its executive production. We did previous tests with the chosen platform, in this case StreamYard, first with the students to understand how their operation would be done, and then with the guests to get used to it and check the conditions of light, sound and connection. The lives were broadcast on November 27, 28 and 29, 2020 on Facebook and YouTube.

 

We sought to promote a greater interest in the event "Who makes literature in Bahia" from the dialogue between renowned writers and beginners from three different axes: prose, poetry and performance. The guests were, respectively: Itamar Vieira Junior and Lilian Almeida, Rita Santana and Hosanna Almeida, and Evanilson Alves and Negreiros.

 

Among the problems faced in the execution of the project we can emphasize: the short preparation time because of the late engagement of the students. Regarding the public, the number of participants (about 400 views on YouTube and 1,225 people reached via Facebook) was considered satisfactory, especially in view of the current large supply of online content.

 

Despite the difficulties and challenges, students evaluated the experience positively. The students’ evaluation indicated that the theoretical-practical approach contributed to their academic-professional formation. This evaluation allowed us to consider that the experience of transposing practical activities to a remote environment was successful. Currently, the offer of the Cultural Production Workshop was resumed remotely again, but no longer jointly - and with no prospect of when face-to-face actions will be possible.

 

 

Training in cultural production / management in Brazil has been scrutinized for more than a decade from different approaches: through the discussion of what is meant by cultural production and producers (Rubim, 2005); through the identification of the paths taken in the formation of the field of cultural management (Cunha, 2007); with the systematization of professionalization and through the gathering of different experiences in training and organization of culture in Brazil (Costa, Mello, 2016), to name a few of them.

 

The experience presented in this article reaches an important point for undergraduate courses in Cultural Production in Brazil, the approximation between the reflection of the cultural sector's own complexity and the practical actions of the daily life of a cultural producer.

 

Teaching through the realization of practical projects reveals important aspects for thinking about training in cultural production in Brazil and beyond. Through the workshops we can, within the curricular structures of the courses, bring students closer to the realities of the cultural sector. It should be noted, however, that in the experience, the insertion in the professional area takes place in a critical way, based and guided by the teachers. When carrying out this immersion and thinking about the conduct of the project, students connect knowledge seen during the course, in this and other disciplines, with its application in the work of the cultural producer. The practical character of the course does not imply a mere instrumentalization of cultural management and production. On the contrary, the historical perspective and theoretical reflection are rather fundamental for acting in a critical and grounded way in the world and in the cultural sector, e. g., regarding working with digital cultural formats.

 

From our experience with the course and its transposition to remote education we realized the importance to raise, day by day, student's motivation and their difficulties to keep up with the routine. These were the greatest challenges faced by our students with a major crisis in our doorstep and it surely is also a challenge for every study program offering digital courses and formats.

 

The political-economic and institutional crisis that Brazil currently faces imposes multiple and complex challenges for the training of arts managers, cultural producers and other professionals dedicated to the organization of the cultural sector. The necessary steps to overcome them concern public agencies, and in particular the Federal Government, but are certainly hampered by the instability of public policies in Brazil. Faced with the worsening of this situation by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to shed light on the conditions of access of students to university courses, as well as the employability and permanence of workers in the Brazilian cultural sector.