Support Programme for Vulnerable Groups
The programme includes a number of actions regarding cultural development (artistic workshops, singing, theatre, photography and tiling), which target vulnerable social groups.
1) Prisoners and homeless persons: Implementation of the programme started in 2010 with the aim to create inclusive cultural spaces, which will strengthen the participation, knowledge and recognition of a collective identity and encourage free expression beyond the concrete limitations to their status as citizens due to imprisonment.
2) Urban Cultural Space: Targets homeless people. It aims at capacity building for the exercise of cultural rights. For this purpose it encourages the creation of spaces for cultural education, consumption and production. It also offers activities, which aim at the socialization and integration of its users.
3) Art education for children and adolescents: Promotes culture as a tool for social inclusion by granting democratic accesss to goods and services and encouraging cultural production and consumption. Funding so far has amounted to $317,000.00.
4) Organization of art, music and literature workshops in psychiatric hospitals (Vilardebó Hospital) and homes for elderly people (Piñeyro del Campo Home).
5) "Musician and Instrument" workshops (since 2010): The workshops target amateur and professional musicians from the interior of the country and provide continuing instrument classes as well as instrument care and maintenance training. (http://cultura.mec.gub.uy/innovaportal/v/11500/8/mecweb/talleres_musico_-_instrumento_2011_?parentid=4632)
Challenges identified in the implementation of this measure:
Achieve the continuity of the process under way, acceptance of the activities and making access to the centres easier, above all in the interior of the country. In addition, the disproportionate amount of time required for administration as compared to the implementation of the workshops was highlighted.
1) The lines of action are the result of interministerial agreements with the support of the "Viví Cultura" project. As part of the project several art workshops were carried out in Punta de Rieles prison.
As to the art education of children and adolescents 3 new cultural centres for young people were inaugurated in spaces, where health and sports activities were already in place.
Urban Cultural Space is a pilot project, which was drawn by the Ministry of Education and Culture in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Development. It is run by a civil society organization, which was selected following a tender process.
Thanks to the programme it was possible to integrate people into artistic and cultural activities, who had been without access to this kind of activities before.