On Wednesday, the 25th, in Brasília, for 10 hours, in an immersive journey with the participation of a hundred people – experts and public representatives from four countries (Germany, Colombia, France and Brazil), secretaries of Culture and Education from four states in the country (Espírito Santo, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Bahia), three secretaries of State from the Brazilian government and dozens of experts, educators and thinkers –, the possibilities, history and potential of a theme of crucial importance for the future were discussed: the implementation of art and culture in the education of children and adolescents. It was during the international seminar International experiences that connect art, culture and education. The symposium was held to present and discuss the unpublished study Good Practice Report: Recommendations for the Construction of Public Policies for Art, Culture and Education, carried out by the Itaú Foundation with support from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Ministries of Education and Culture and Inep.
The goal of the meeting was very clear: to present concrete evidence of the numerous advantages of including contact with integrated arts curricula in the education of children and adolescents. With this information in hand, the government will be able to work concretely in the future to promote “more equitable and innovative” public policies for social improvement, according to the study. The results showed what is already obvious: the integration of the arts into school curricula improves the socio-emotional development of young people, participation, social ties, increases scores on writing tests and helps low-performing students, leading to better academic results in the future. There are specific results among the statistics presented, such as: music education in schools improves cognitive skills, such as phonological awareness, mathematics and processing speed; and theater education helps develop verbal skills and text interpretation. An examination of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment, carried out every 3 years by the OECD) results identified a positive relationship between the participation of 15-year-olds in artistic and cultural activities and academic performance in mathematics and reading in some countries (such as Canada, Estonia, Norway and the United Kingdom).
These are not conclusions that society is not already aware of: according to the study, in Brazil, 8 out of 10 parents or guardians of children and adolescents ask the government to increase the number of cultural activities offered in schools; 80% of students say they would like to have more cultural activities in schools; and 38% cite schools as the place where they have effective contact with cultural activities. However, for the organizers of the symposium, Brazil (and much of Latin America) still faces an arid environment for concretely demonstrating these benefits and advantages, hence the importance of this first study and the debate it has led to. “We know it is important, but we are reluctant to implement it,” said Esmeralda Macana, coordinator of the Itaú Foundation Observatory. Brazil’s National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), a normative document that guides national pedagogical planning, mentions the arts five times in its composition.
Diana Toledo, Education Policy Outlook Executive at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), responsible for presenting this first report (which is the result of an agreement between the Itaú Foundation and the Brazilian government in 2024), praised Brazil's stance in working consistently and continuously in data collection and explained the relevance of the OECD's partnership with the two ministries and the Itaú Foundation. “(Brazil) is a very important contributor, collecting quality data and information,” she pointed out.
There are several recent studies carried out in Brazil that attest to how the artistic and cultural sectors have contributed significantly to economic growth and promoted skills and innovation capabilities that end up benefiting other sectors, in addition to creating qualified jobs. Between 2012 and 2020, the average annual growth rate of the cultural and creative sector economy was 2,2% per year, compared to -0,4% for the national economy in general, according to data collected in 2022 by the Itaú Foundation Observatory.
The day’s panels were led by both independent experts and activists and by Brazilian government leaders, and it was interesting to observe the synergy between these forces in relation to the topic under discussion. Fabiano Piúba, who is the National Secretary of Books and Reading at the Ministry of Culture (MinC), read a short written manifesto, which was very well received, and recounted an experience he had when he was Secretary of Culture for Ceará, between 2016 and 2022, when he promoted a program to offer film screenings to schoolchildren at Cine São Luiz. There, he learned that for almost 100% of the students (and also the teachers) participating, that was the first time they had entered a movie theater, a cultural exclusion he called “perversity.”
Kátia Schweickardt, Secretary of Basic Education at the Ministry of Education, moved those present when she spoke about her experience in riverside communities in the Amazon, where she comes from, and demonstrated the federal government's great commitment to the problem presented. After defining herself as a black woman, she emphasized that, despite this, she is not guided solely by identity issues and that, in order to follow the guidance of the President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to extend the school day, she also sees the need to expand the environments, and culture fits precisely this demand. “The Bumbódromo is a great educational space, as are the samba schools and all the masters of culture,” she stated. Kátia highlighted that, since Lula started the Full-Time School program in 2023, the percentage of municipalities that had full-time education policies jumped from 17% to 66%, with almost 2 million enrollments.
Marcela Rocio Herrera Oleas, a scientific specialist at DLR Projektträger in Germany, spoke about the Kultur Macht Stark institution and stated that the German experience, which has served 1,5 million participants since 2013, with over 50 cultural activities and 50 million euros in investment, is based on a very basic philosophy: ideas have to come from below, and that before starting a social movement, a grassroots movement must be started, allowing several solutions to emerge for different places, and not just one for everyone. Each Kultur Macht Stark center must have at least three local partnerships to be successful. The profile of the teachers, who generally come from the middle class, also does not account for the specificities of each community, so it is important to involve local actors, from clubs to churches. “It’s not just about eating the pie, but inventing the recipe,” she stated.
Solmar Díaz, from the Colombian Ministry of Culture, spoke about the experience of comprehensive education in his country and said that, for the government, it is a strategic commitment to redefining school time – in this process, the integrality of the human being is recognized, something that can allow the full development of the dimensions of the personality, with a cultural, socio-affective and cognitive recognition of the potential of each individual. In Colombia, Solmar explained, educational action in areas recently emerging from conflict also requires the recognition of a “critical pedagogy of the body” to deal with the traumas of war.
Asked to comment on how Brazilian indigenous people view such issues, writer and activist Daniel Munduruku joked: “Everyone wants to adopt the indigenous way of educating,” he said amusedly. “Who knows, maybe now we’ll start listening to the native populations.” Munduruku explained that the indigenous experience, although diverse across the country, presupposes education for the whole, systemic, and their tradition has not seen things separately for a long time – art and culture are not dissociated from all other daily activities. He told the story told to him by indigenous expert Orlando Villas-Boas, of a mother who made very refined ceramics and her young son, as soon as she finished a vase, would go over and break it. And the mother made another one that was equally well-finished. Villas-Boas went to her, upset, to ask why she didn’t make just any old, ugly vase, since it would just break anyway. She told him that that was just how she did it. In other words: it is not about giving different purposes to things, they are as they should be.
The president of the Itaú Foundation, Eduardo Saron, who opened the symposium, highlighted that the fact that schools are the most present public facilities in Brazilian territory projects education as “the catalyst for solutions, not only for the teaching-learning process, but also for solutions (for issues) that the territories offer, based on this catalyst called public schools”, capable of contributing to the development of a new subjectivity.
The Secretary of Culture of Espírito Santo, Fabrício Noronha (who also chairs the National Forum of Secretaries of Culture), stated that this new and challenging moment for education in the country also opens up new perspectives, whose demands can be incorporated into the policies of the National Culture System (SNC), and which require a convergence of agendas to which he will remain attentive. “I leave here very inspired for several actions there in our territory”, he stated, adding that the inauguration of Cais das Artes, a bold architectural center by Paulo Mendes da Rocha that is about to be inaugurated, should house projects from the state education network of Espírito Santo.
Bel Mayer, educator and coordinator of the Brazilian Institute for Research and Community Support (IBEAC), spoke in one of the panels about her experience of winning community libraries in the Parelheiros neighborhood in the capital of São Paulo, something that seemed impossible a few years ago (there were none) and today the neighborhood has a group of six institutions. She said that it is necessary to adopt new policies to stimulate cultural productions, warning about the prevalence of support notices throughout the country. She recalled friends who come to her complaining that they missed out on a notice by 0,2 points and that she doesn't think that's fair. "What does 0,2 points mean to shelve a cultural project?" Bel recalled a comment she heard from the anthropologist from Minas Gerais, Tião Rocha: "We need to stop with the notices and start being for everyone."
Journalist Jotabê Medeiros traveled to Brasília at the invitation of the Itaú Foundation
