The Diplomat
Chile will host the IX Ibero-American Congress of Culture in 2025, as announced today by the Chilean Minister of Culture, Carolina Arredondo Marzán, at the closing ceremony of the eighth edition of the congress, which this year took place in Lisbon.
On the third and final day of the event, the conclusions and recommendations drawn from the different sessions of the program were also highlighted, reported the Ibero-American General Secretariat.
In the final interventions of the Congress, the Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva, stated that it is “through culture that, together, we will be able to build an indestructible bridge, a bridge that we need to build in many moments, particularly in the days of individual and collective uncertainty that we are experiencing. Pedro Adão e Silva also highlighted the importance of the relations between the Ibero-American universe and the CPLP “because it corresponds to another bridge and another fundamental expansion”, “establishing an artistic exchange between three continents.”
For the General Director of Culture of the OEI, Raphael Callou, culture is the most deeply rooted element in our perspective of individual and collective identity: «when talking about culture and its contributions to sustainable development throughout the Congress, it was clear in these debates that there are three axes: the social axis, the economic contribution axis and the environmental axis. In this sense, he explained that “in the last four years we have carried out 198 projects in Ibero-American countries that materialize objectives in these three axes that we talked about.”
The Content Consultant of the VIII Congress, Manuel Gama, was in charge of summarizing the main lines of thought and conclusions that emerged from three intense days of sharing, debate and mutual enrichment. Manuel Gama highlighted the notion, widely repeated throughout the Congress, “of the importance of cultures for well-being, for living well, for building a citizenship that values the diversity that Ibero-America includes in itself.” To do this, he continued, it is important to “deinstitutionalize culture, bring it to the center of the discussion of public policies and, only then, bring it closer to the people and build citizenship.”
Enrique Vargas, Coordinator of the Ibero-American Cultural Space of the SEGIB, highlighted the agreement reached during the informal meeting of Ministers of Culture, held on the first day of the Congress, to continue working from consensus to make culture a public good. He also highlighted the proposal to create an Ibero-American program of literary residencies and a specific program on video games. Finally, Vargas stressed the importance of making culture an essential part of the Future Agenda and recalled that all the results of this edition of the Congress will be presented at the next Summit of Heads of State and Government.
