Picture: Leonardo Germani speaks during event at CCSP
In November, Mapas Culturais was in the programming of two events in São Paulo (SP). On day 24, a lecture was held about the software and about SP Cultura − first deployment of the platform − at Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP), as part of Encontro Comunicação, Espaço Público e Cultura (Communication, Public Space and Culture Meeting). On day 25, Mapas Culturais was introduced at Mário de Andrade Library during the State of the Map Latam event, annual conference dedicated to mappers and OpenStreetMap (OSM) users in Latin America.
The developer Leonardo Germani, who is part of the Mapas Culturais Network and was general coordinator of Cultural Information Monitoring in the Ministry of Culture, was the lecturer at CCSP with Luciana Piazzon, responsible for SP Cultura in São Paulo Municipal Department of Culture. The mediator was Márcio Yonamine, who works at CCSP since 2004 and is a member of the Communication team. He began the lecture saying that, before Mapas Culturais, the cultural institutions of the Municipality of São Paulo used to work separately and it was difficult to have an overview about their actions.
Leonardo spoke of the origin of Mapas Culturais, with the objective of creating an open platform. “We concluded we didn’t have to make an information platform. We had to make a communication and management platform. The information would be a consequence”, he explains. Luciana said that there was a need for a tool that would facilitate the Municipal Department of Culture work and allow disclosing cultural actions more efficiently. “It was missing an integrated insight for all institutions,” she said.
Mapas Culturais was created in 2013 in partnership between Instituto TIM and the Municipal Department of Culture of São Paulo, the first municipality to adopt the platform (SP Cultura). The tool allows focusing and managing a large number of information on cultural programming and cultural projects ongoing in the city.
At the Mário de Andrade Library, during the State of the Map Latam, Leonardo introduced Mapas Culturais in a lecture with journalist André Deak, who also participated in the development of SP Cultura. André spoke about Arte Fora do Museu (Art Outside the Museum), a collaborative platform launched in 2011 in São Paulo that maps works of Art that are in the public space of the city, and is one of the initiatives that guided the development of the Mapas Culturais project.
Leonardo talked about the importance of initiatives of mapping and the creation of digital platforms that are open and free alternatives. He said it is necessary that these platforms work as useful tools for both who releases the information as for the public, and “friendly” for users. Leonardo pointed out that platforms such as Mapas Culturais increase the communication power between managers and users. “The information, with much less effort, can reach places that the manager couldn’t reach alone”, he says.
Currently, there are 19 Mapas Culturais deployments. The platform also operates, in addition to the city of São Paulo (SP), in the states of Ceará, Rio Grande do Sul, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, São Paulo, in the Federal District and in the cities of Sobral (CE), Blumenau (SC), São José dos Campos (São Paulo), João Pessoa (PB), Santo André (SP), Belo Horizonte (MG), Ubatuba (SP) and Parnaíba (PI). Operating in the Ministry of Culture, the software is used by other four platforms: Cultura Viva, Museus BR, Mapa das Bibliotecas and Mapa da Cultura.
