Photo by: Juliana Santos/Prefeitura Municipal de João Pessoa
On September 16th, the city of João Pessoa-PB launched the JP Cultura platform, a deployment of the Mapas Culturais software, developed by Instituto TIM. Approximately 75 people – government authorities, cultural agents and civil society representatives – participated in the launching event at the Municipal Palace auditorium. Attendees included the the executive director of the João Pessoa Cultural Foundation (Funjope), Maurício Burity; the City Government Chief of Staff, Elan Miranda; the head of the Cultural Memory division at Funjope, Eliane Bibiano; the councilman Fuba; and the president of Instituto TIM, Manoel Horacio.
“I congratulate everyone who is directly linked to this Instituto TIM initiative. We, who are running a public institution, know about the lack of information with regard to what happens in our city,” said Maurício Burity. “We need this tool in order to map out and identify cultural manifestations,” he added. As with João Pessoa, other cities (including Santo André-SP and Belo Horizonte-MG) and states (such as São Paulo) are implementing the Mapas Culturais platform with the support of Instituto TIM.
“Each partnership established by the institute, each initiative embraced and recognized by public managers, schools and organizations is a gift, which reaffirms our commitment to making contributions that will lead towards a better and fairer society,” said Manoel Horacio. The president of Instituto TIM reinforced the importance of citizens making contributions to the platform – which can be done by adding cultural information in a collaborative way. At the launch, there was also a presentation by repentista (music improviser) Oliveira de Panelas and a demonstration of JP Cultura.
Eliane Bibiano, responsible for coordinating the project, thanked everyone that participated in the launch and talked about her passion for the initiative, which was the reason why the project gained its own space within Funjope. “I saw an opportunity for us to acquire a tool that would meet several demands, both internal – in terms of memory, database of our artists, support to the development of public policies aimed at cultural themes, cultural programs – and external, since artists, agents, cultural promoters, venues and projects could all be part of this platform in a collaborative and integrated way,” she said.
Training
On September 14th and 15th, training sessions were carried out for 30 cultural agents and 13 Funjope managers on the use of the platform and its main functionalities. At each training session, a guest was chosen to represent the two types of agents – individual and collective ones – in order to demonstrate how the registration of entities (events, venues, agents and projects) worked.
In addition to the official announcement made by the City Government, for the first time ever the launch of a Mapas Culturais deployment was announced as an event on the platform itself. The division of Cultural Memory at Funjope, the entity responsible for implementing JP Cultura, is also adding information to the platform – including data related to past projects and events, keeping these records visible and available to users.
Photo by: Juliana Santos/Prefeitura Municipal de João Pessoa
