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Authors: Juliana Pires de Arruda Leite, Isabela Tomáz de Melo
Keywords: state, society, culture, policies
Abstract: The right to culture manifests itself in different ways: through access to cultural goods and cultural services, emphasizing the right to information (libraries, historical archives, art schools, workshops, free shows and exhibitions, book publishing, etc.); also through the right to cultural creation, which comprises the dimensions in which individuals, groups and social classes recognize themselves as subjects of their own history and, therefore, as cultural subjects. Also the right to participate in public decisions about culture through deliberative councils and forums in which all actors - artistic and intellectual associations, culture-creating groups, and cultural movements - are represented to ensure a cultural policy that is far from bias and discrimination. In Brazil, culture as an object of public policies had its entry into government agendas from the Federal Constitution of 1988, which instituted the right to culture as part of social rights. Thus, several spheres of government have programs aimed at cultural production and diffusion. This paper proposes a discussion about the role of the State as the provider of the right to culture, through an evaluation of the Cultural Action Program, State Government of São Paulo. The methodological approach is the process evaluation, in which information about the program operation was collected through workshops and semi-structured interviews. This study aims to contribute to an overview of how the right to culture is treated in the most economically developed state of Brazil, seeking to answer the question of how the state fiscal crisis affected the financing and implementation of culture policies on the promotion of the right to culture.