Mapa das Ideias was born more than 20 years ago from a simple but ambitious idea - to create experiences and projects focused on culture, heritage and citizenship, building relationships between audiences, arts and knowledge.
To fulfil this vision, we have dedicated ourselves since 1999 to helping cultural organisations and institutions to accomplish their artistic vision, their social purpose and their economic sustainability.
Who we are and what we do is a function of our beliefs.
We believe that democracy can only survive with active and informed citizens.
And that faithful citizenship can only exist in a society that values education, culture and knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
When education is not limited to a logic of stages, when it recovers the true meaning of the educational process - education is the democratic form of this power.
Science, culture, heritage, the arts - all these expressions of human knowledge enrich our lives and give us a voice, power over our circumstances, and agency over our destiny.
More is needed to live immersed in the continuous noise of an information society. We have to be more demanding.
We need to build an actual society of knowledge and culture.
At the heart of this construction are forms of work that believe in the socialising power of cultural institutions as instruments of cultural democratisation, linking formal, informal and non-formal education.
Culture cannot, however, be a sign of social distinction or a way of stating the superiority of certain initiates.
This idea of culture, which only serves to stigmatise vast sectors of society, is an aberration, a form of symbolic violence that neither serves a democratic project nor honours the expression and history of human knowledge.
Culture can't just be a consumer good.
A democratic society is not made up of cultural consumers, but of citizens.
Culture is a space of freedom where cultural consumption must give way to cultural participation.
The right to culture, both individual and collective, is more than an aspiration, it is at the heart of the idea of freedom in a democracy.
Its most concrete expression can be seen in the practices of Cultural Democracy, which seek to dignify all forms of expression and genuinely free choice.
This right does not mean giving up on quality criteria.
Instead, it abandons the universal nature of these criteria, opening up creative space for uncertainty, doubt and its permanent free, open and transparent negotiation.
Cultural democracy is not just the democratization of culture. It encompasses the creation of cultural goods and works, their distribution and their reception.
It aims to bring as many people as possible into contact with the most demanding cultural forms so that this contact can be extended and transformed into a creative act of participation.
So that this participation can later be fruitful in autonomous forms of creation, in the hands of as many as possible.
Audience development is at the heart of true Cultural Democracy.
Audience development is dedicated to destroying the myth of the ‘audience’, that imagined community of monolithic normalisation of difference. Beyond this myth is a universe of real people and enormous diversity, which we urgently need to know and recognise.
Audience development is dedicated to destroying the stereotypical visitor, user and consumer classifications. Their economic utilitarianism limits our understanding of the actual ways in which real audiences relate to culture.
Audience Development is dedicated to mapping the actual plurality of audiences and their ways of relating to cultural works and institutions.
Audience development multiplies the transformative power that cultural institutions must have to combat a discourse of powerlessness and sociological fatality in access to culture.
This leadership potential of cultural organisations and institutions is expressed in the construction of innovative practices that promote their relevance and proximity to citizens.
It is expressed in the construction of new forms of relationship with culture and art that will ultimately fulfil everyone's actual right to culture.
And it is the very nature of cultural institutions, with their technical, human and financial resources, allows them to think long-term, taking the step forward and assuming the ambition and promise contained in this leadership.
Mediation, at the heart of Audience Development work, cannot be a stage for a select group of specialists entrenched in their institutions.
It must be transversal, encompassing the skills of curators, managers, curators, animators, programmers and mediators.
It carries with it the ambition of building respect within institutions for the appropriation of their spaces and the multiple interpretations and points of view that the relationship with their works arouses in its different audiences.
The relevance that Mediation has acquired in recent decades in the programme discourses of institutions needs to be more accurate.
This relevance originates in the questions of the sustainability of cultural agents and institutions raised by a context in which public authorities tend to disengage from funding culture.
However, while Mediation is institutionally defended as the first line of defence for the objectives of cultural and artistic organisations, those who work in it often occupy a secondary position or live in a transitory and precarious status.
It is not enough to express agreement on the importance of new Mediation strategies.
We need to act. Today.
These areas are strategic for cultural organisations because they enable them to realise their programmatic visions of the arts and culture as tools for social cohesion and integration.
These areas are strategic for cultural organisations because the trajectories and reputations of the institutions and their members are built through them.
We need to fulfill our intentions. We need to build a true cultural democracy.
Mapa built its identity around this mission.
We investigate unconventional ways of reaching the real and potential audiences within the reach of each institution, for each project.
To do this, we articulate representations, practices and emotions in complex processes, incorporating the psychosocial profiles of real, concrete and tangible audiences and emphasising the relevance of the work of cultural institutions in everyone's lives.
That's why all our mediation and intermediation projects have a research and evaluation dimension.
Constant self-criticism and learning are essential for actual experimentation and innovation.