Cultural Reactives

After culture was declared an essential activity for the city by the mayor of Murcia during the pandemic, the Department of Culture has worked ceaselessly in the creation and implementation of a new participatory cultural model, carried out by representatives of the City Council, collectives of artists and creators and representatives of society within the field of culture.

This is the basis on which the Cultural Reactives initiative is created, which consists in structured cultural procurement through municipal spending in times of crisis, in this case driven by the context of COVID-19 and its subsequent consequences, placing special emphasis in digital and remote cultural offers and new cultural opportunities focused on experience and added value, improving quality standards and encouraging cultural consumption that involves peri-urban areas, heritage, traditions and identity, so as to not only unload the centre of the city, but allow a new approach to business models.

The objective is to allow artists and creatives to prepare projects, even when in a situation of confinement or limited movement due to the COVID pandemic or any other cause of similar effects, promoting network and cultural production in all its fields and across all sectors (amateur, professional, national and international) and promoting the use of digital tools (platforms, apps, digital media, etc.).

Various committees made up of officials from the Culture Department will evaluate projects and proposals in a transversal manner, ensuring the required quality, as well as their execution through evaluation and monitoring in a selection, production, consumption process, etc. The application process is one hundred percent digital, which guarantees that all proposals are collected with a telematic registry.

The programme has been recognised at European level as an example of good practices to boost the cultural sector and respond to the difficulties that artists and creators are facing given the current health crisis. In addition, the European Commission chose Murcia to lead the culture roadmap in Europe until Horizon 2030.

Cultural Innovation Lab

Murcia implements a new cultural model focused on citizens and citizen participation throughout the territory, and a new governance model that sees the city as a cultural innovation laboratory for production, social cohesion,the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities in culture, and improving the efficiency of public culture management as cornerstones within the SO10 framework of the Spanish Urban Agenda 2030.

These new Cultural Reactives are born from Department of Culture’s belief that citizen participation is a very useful tool to improve management, since it provides new visions in the regulation drafting or planning and allows the contrast of opinions between people or groups that are usually outside of these processes. This participation mechanism allows Murcia City Council to fulfill its objective of listening to citizens in an organised way and offering a guarantee of response.

The increasing complexity of institutional management should be taken into account. The amount of information available, the interrelation of all activities inside and outside the City Council itself, the incorporation of new agents from outside politics with the intention of collaborating, etc., makes it no longer possible to find a single solution to the challenges thatmust be faced in this new cultural reality.

Citizen participation

In this new scenario, a dynamic approach is required, based on synergies, collaboration and transversality. It is in this context that citizen participation in the Cultural Reactives programme has a key role, improving decision-making and management of their spaces and subsequent programming.

Good practice in management on a European level

The new lines of work of the Department of Culture have been recognised as a model of good management practices at the European level, for providing institutional transparency and encouraging promotion and training in cultural and creative industries and cultural heritage.

The current situation and the design of this new cultural policy for the city of Murcia hasgenerate din proactive new solutions for problems generated in the specific framework of the cultural sector, and the Cultural Reactives production project represents an exceptional opportunity to continue to rethink cultural policies and practices, as well as to contrast different initiatives and ways of producing culture in a more transparent way with the integration of citizen participation through this call for projects while still complying with current public procurement regulations.