The program of the 10th edition of Virada Cultural de São Paulo (São Paulo’s Cultural Marathon) is integrated into the Mapas Culturais platform. The attractions and the street festival locations – the largest in the country – are inserted in the platform with the aim of storing the event information, working as a database. “The Virada’s website pulls the information from Mapas Culturais to show it to the user. It works as a consultation tool,” explained one of the project coordinators, Leonardo Germani. The data was entered by the communications staff of the São Paulo Municipal Department of Culture and can be accessed by any internet user.
It is the first time the Mapas Culturais tool (which was developed in a partnership with the city of São Paulo) has been used by an external application – in this case, the Virada Cultural’s website. It is also the first time the platform has been used as an active culture management tool. For Leonardo, integration is an important step, as the information may contribute to the cultural administration of São Paulo to research and compare data, among other activities.
The integration is done through an API (Application Programming Interface), an interface that gathers data from different applications or websites. The Virada Cultural’s website can access data on the event’s schedule registered on the platform, and vice versa. That is, the integration is reciprocal. “The information is structured on the platform and on the website. Mapas Culturais will work as a data memory, as a query for future research,” explains Leonardo.
Those responsible for the communication of the city’s cultural equipment (Youth Cultural Centre and São Paulo Cultural Centre, initially) are being trained to use the platform – which in the city of São Paulo-SP is named SP Cultura. The communication staff of the São Paulo Municipal Department of Culture was the first to receive their instructions and enter data in the cultural management tool.
Virada Cultural is an event that takes place annually in São Paulo, with the goal of integrating all aspects of art (music, theater, cinema, cyber art, dance etc.) and brings together performances by national and international artists, on stages put up in public cultural spaces, avenues and streets of São Paulo. A 24h non-stop event, the event starts at 7pm on May 17th and ends at 7pm on May 18th.
