A Conversation Series on Cultural Programming and Citizenship
Drawing from the Youth Addendum to the Porto Santo / Caldas da Rainha-Loulé Charter, presented at MONDIACULT 2025 – UNESCO in Barcelona, CULTURA SITUADA is a series of six conversations that brings into public space the concerns of young artists, cultural agents and mediators from Caldas da Rainha about the challenges shaping their practices.
From September to December 2026, the CCC Café-Concerto hosts six sessions around the six themes of the Addendum: cultural participation and citizenship; inequalities in access to culture; inclusion vs. hierarchies and elitism; digital culture and ethical challenges; labour conditions for cultural workers; and cultural and artistic education.
Each session brings together a co-author of the Addendum as moderator, the voice of a local cultural collective, a master’s student from ESAD.CR/ULO, and an invited specialist — each with full autonomy and freedom of approach, fostering reflective dissent around each theme. The conversations will be edited and published as contributions and resources, available in both physical and digital formats, documenting the urgencies of young people working in arts and culture and mapping paths for intergenerational dialogue.
CULTURA SITUADA is curated by Jade Aura, Lígia Afonso and the writing team of the Youth Addendum to the Porto Santo / Caldas da Rainha-Loulé Charter, in collaboration with the CCC, the UNESCO Chair in Arts and Culture Management, Cities and Creativity, LiDA – Laboratory of Research in Design and Arts, the Master’s in Cultural Management at ESAD.CR – University of Leiria and Oeste, and the Campus Cultural project of the National Arts Plan.
Living matter has a plasticity that allows for constant cosmic expansion. Applied to Culture, there are substances that intersect, react and resist; others that remain suspended until a new condition triggers their moment of action. Culture expands through contact between its most diverse expressions, frictions and contaminations — driven by agents that are never neutral, in relentless pursuit of alternatives with the potential to disrupt, question and reclaim what remains at the door of institutions, pushing towards their structural transformation. CULTURA SITUADA emerges from this principle, crossing voices, universes, dissenting experiences and tensions that run through contemporary cultural life.
Sara Brighenti (introduction), Jade Aura (moderation), with Guilherme Rocha, Tânia Martins and Luís Ferreira
What does it mean to participate in cultural life beyond being a body present in the room? What place do we occupy — and want to occupy — in cultural institutions: audiences to be won over, passive recipients, or active hands in the structures that decide, create and programme? This conversation departs from the need to change methods, relationships and forms of organisation. If young people are to be at the centre of decisions, what conditions are needed for that participation to be real? How do we ensure that intersectional representation of youth doesn’t reduce to a performative quota-filling exercise, but instead translates into genuine power to decide, create, mediate and programme?
Jade Aura (introduction), Muriel Lima (moderation), with Tristany Mundu, Denise Santos and Francisco Frazão
Access to culture remains marked by territorial inconsistencies, mobility failures, economic and class conditions, and the reluctance of spaces and institutions to confront their own legacies of exclusion. How can we ensure that each person can develop and live their own cultural life in the place they wish to belong to? This session looks at inequalities of access not merely as a matter of physical distance from cultural venues, but as a consequence of the disconnected ways in which culture and its practice have been conceived — problems of networks, transport, prices, digital resources and the capacity to participate.
Telma Lopes (introduction), Jade Aura (moderation), with Gil Rodrigues Ubaldo, Marri Rocha and Àkila a.k.a Puta da Silva
Who decides what counts as culture? And who is left out when certain practices, languages or people continue to be classified as «high» or «low» culture? The hierarchies of the cultural sector are not only found in discourse about art — they run through structures, values, organograms and decision-making processes. Speaking of inclusion means going beyond the presence of diverse audiences or the token representation of marginalised groups. It means questioning who occupies positions of power, who shapes narratives, and what a truly transformative inclusion — one that operates at the root — would actually look like.
Mário Branquinho and Lígia Afonso (introduction), Carolina Franco (moderation), with Catarina Lente, João Pedro Rodrigues e Sousa and Odete
Culture increasingly happens in digital environments — but who defines the conditions under which we see, produce and share culture in these spaces? Platforms, algorithms and artificial intelligence systems now participate in the circulation of content, the construction of perceptions and the way we represent ourselves. Digital literacy becomes, in this context, a condition of cultural participation. Between the potential for democratisation and the risks of misinformation, algorithmic dependency, environmental impact and the displacement of labour, this session asks: what digital future do we want to build for culture, and who should have a say in defining it?
Jade Aura (introduction), Clara Passarinho (moderation), with Piny, Mara Pereira and Maria Leite
Making culture is also work — and care. Yet the sector remains marked by precarity, unfamiliarity with labour rights, poorly regulated internships, and difficulty accessing information about careers and working conditions. Where does volunteering end and work begin? How do we prevent first professional experiences from becoming forms of exploitation? This session places at its centre the need to transform knowledge into capacity for action and an ethics of care — discussing how workers and institutions alike can contribute to better conditions of cultural production.
Lígia Afonso (introduction), Telma Lopes and Pedro Colaço (moderation), with Francisca Soares, Xullaji and Paula Cardoso
The relationship between culture and education cannot depend on occasional visits, isolated projects or extraordinary activities. If arts and cultures have a role in the formation of citizens, what place should they occupy in the daily life of schools and educational communities? Rather than adding culture to the curriculum, this session asks how we might make cultural experience a continuous dimension of education — and how schools might also serve as cultural hubs, capable of fostering culturally active and participatory citizens.
