Mission Culture, a social program that aims to transform cultural education in Venezuela, celebrated its seventh anniversary on July 10, the state-run Venezuelan News Agency (AVN) said.
The program was created on July 10, 2005, by the government of President Hugo Chavez. It has since trained more than 12,000 people in different areas of the arts to foster a renewal of popular creativity.
The Venezuelan culture minister Pedro Calzadilla said on radio: “Mission Culture created a small revolution when it began because people found a cultural political space to facilitate academic training. Now, each of these people has joined the country’s workforce as an army connected with transformative culture.”
Since Mission Culture was created, it has focused on including women and men into the arts, regardless their age, through an educational system aimed at “transferring knowledge from life experience, discovering the ancestral personality of each individual and awakening their conscience through their community’s local history,” said the program’s director, Saulibeth Rivas.
Mission Culture has trained people in dance, theatre, literature and other arts. This social program has also boosted cultural activities in 98% of states and municipalities throughout the country, where a permanent cultural agenda is now in place.
The mission will soon launch a second phase aimed at organising communities by promoting socio-productive activities allowing artists to receive economic benefits when they create their work. Meanwhile, the social value of culture will also be promoted through cultural committees.
“We will follow the 2013-2019 National Plan in community training with support from trainers and those that graduated through the mission, who will cooperate in helping this cultural army to continue moving forward,” Rivas said.