The Republic’s Government, through the Culture Secretariat of the Presidency, presented on February 22 the Institutional Strategic Plan that will set the foundations for new cultural policies up to the year 2014. This is a historic event because it is the first time that the Presidential institution in charge of promoting and disseminating culture offers such detail in its cultural conceptualization and in its projects for the next five years.
In January 2009, President Funes committed to come up with a new way of promoting culture from the public sector. One which would be more inclusive and would bring about social transformation. This commitment will have from today a first “map”, which can be followed by all Salvadoreans.
In accordance with this commitment and since May 2010, when Dr. Héctor Samour was appointed Secretary, the Culture Secretariat has tried to bring about institutional change and actions tending towards development through culture and arts.
Cultural scientific research and partnerships with various actors of social life are two of the key elements to which the current administration has pledged its firm commitment. Simultaneously, this plan reaffirms broader commitments with El Salvador’s society, outlines more specific working areas and sets up the tools used to promote Salvadorean culture nationally and internationally. Artists’ status will also be benefited through work opportunities and by guaranteeing their well being.
“As the institution that manages, promotes and implements public cultural policies, we hope to achieve, in the shortest possible time, the inclusion of all art’s sectors in the cultural and institutional activities of our country” were the words of Dr. Héctor Samour, Culture Secretary, Plan’s signatory, and who becomes as of today the first civil servant to have devised, with his staff, a political projection for cultural development in El Salvador.
The seven policies that from tomorrow will be the engine of the Culture Secretary’s institutional administration:
1. A strategy to change cultural paradigms and to place culture as an instrument to favour integral human development in El Salvador.
2. A strategy to vindicate popular culture and native peoples’ heritage (tangible and intangible).
3. A strategy to stimulate and support artistic creativity and production and free and fair access of citizens to the country’s cultural goods.
4. A strategy to support artists’ and cultural administrators’ social security
5. A strategy to boost education in all art forms.
6. A strategy to broaden international cooperation to support Salvadorean culture.
7. A strategy to renovate and innovate cultural institutionality.