Towards sustainability in cultural programming

: an analysis of a cultural institution in the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Since 2020, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been present in many industries, including the cultural sector, where the institutions had to redefine themselves to address the needs of their audience in an alternative way. As a result, this internship report will focus on whether Lisbon's cultural programming has changed and the relationship between the relevance of culture and sustainable development in a post-pandemic environment. To this end, this dissertation examines the cultural programming of a Portuguese contemporary cultural institution as a case study: Culturgest. However, the cultural industry is composed of several production and distribution agents; therefore, in the second part of the analysis, a brief comparison with the institution, Carpintarias de São Lázaro (CSL), is developed. The objective of this report is not simply to quantify the impact of the pandemic, but to understand it. Therefore, we will complement the quantitative view of the impact of the pandemic, in Portugal and the world, with a qualitative analysis of how cultural programming has changed in the aftermath of the pandemic. For this, interviews and a literature review were done analyzing four events produced in Culturgest after the pandemic and a series of strategies suggested by UNESCO to recover the cultural sector after the health crisis. Taking Culturgest as a reference, we can conclude that Lisbon's cultural programming did not undergo substantial changes between 2020 and 2022. A commitment to egalitarian programming based on accessibility was identified, but this was by no means new. Nevertheless, the importance of this programming became more relevant in the wake of a global health crisis that gave greater prominence to the role of culture in sustainable development outside the economic, ecological, and financial frameworks.

Date of Award	7 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Joana Moura (Supervisor)