For a week, Chilean cultural administrators visited some cities of the country and got familiar with Colombia’s cultural administration and decentralization model as a development of the Strategic Association Memorandum of Understanding signed by both countries in 2008.
From the 2nd to the 8th of December, a delegation of cultural centres’ coordinators from Chile visited the country and developed a working agenda with cultural institutions of Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Tuluá, Cúcuta, Pamplona, Los Patios and Villa del Rosario, in Norte de Santander, in order to get to know deeply practices shared by both countries, to compare and make richer each country’s cultural administration processes.
The delegation was made up by Bernardita Ilabaca, Director of Centro Cultural de Cerro de Navia; Jacqueline Astudillo, Director of Centro Cultural de Colina and Jonny Labra, Director of Centro Cultural de San Joaquín. It was coordinated by Daniela Campos Berkhoff, Head of the Cultural Administration Unit of Chile’s Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes.
“It was very interesting to see that we share similarities and face the same issues in relation to cultural practice, as well as differences when dealing with cultural administration that enable us to learn from each other. For us the decentralized cultural administration model that has been developed in Colombia is very interesting: the relationship between the Ministry and the mayor’s office or municipal governments and the difficulties faced to reach certain territories was enriching” expressed Daniela Campos Berkhoff, Head of the Cultural Administration Unit of Chile’s Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes.
She also added that this exchange provided Chilean cultural centres and cultural infrastructure network with examples of cultural administration models and of ways to administer and finance cultural programs and projects.
She also highlighted the advisory and follow up of work of the Ministry, through the Regional Promoters Strategy developed by the Dirección de Fomento Regional (Direction of Regional Promotion). “It is a necessary model because it is important to create a link between the State and the local governments in order to create a common policy that respects the differences and specificities of each territory. The State’s role and job is to guarantee cultural rights and it is quite significant that this rights are guaranteed by the central level” were Campos’ words.
The frame of reference of this visit is the Memorandum of Understanding on Cultural Cooperation signed by Chile’s Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes and Colombia’s Ministry of Culture in 2008 that was ratified in August 2011 through the Strategic Association Memorandum of Understanding between the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Chile that reads in its first article: “cultural collaboration and exchange are privileged means to integrate both peoples and increase knowledge of one another”.