Culture and the Commons - Cultural Policies for Commons Practices

Culture and the Commons Cultural policies for Commons practice International Commons Conference, Berlin, 01.11.2010 Ok, the 5 minutes challenge.. My name is Jose Murilo, and I am from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and I am going to present our experience implementing digital culture policies from inside the government. It all starts with Gilberto Gil our minister from 2003 to 2008 when he became the minister of culture he is a grammy awarded world musician and he declared himself a 'hacker-minister' in the sense of studying the government mechanisms in order to adjust and reconfigure them according to the dynamics and needs of present times In this picture he is in a concert with David Byrne in New York promoted by Wired magazine and Creative Commons, it was in September 2004 But it is important for us here to trace back what Gil was doing in the sixties this is the Tropicalia movement in Brazil The Tropicalia movement presented a totally new approach and became a cultural revolution in Brazil The main aspects of Tropicalia were: openness, for example: regional rhythms mixed with electric guitars and the urge to communicate and mix across cultures also, transnationalism, and a kind of a confusion about left-right positions in politics For example: Gil managed to aggravate both the military right and the intellectual left with his music the former for subversion and the latter for embracing Anglo-American rock and pop. The fact of having Gilberto Gil from Tropicalia at the Brazilian Ministry of Culture caught the attention of some observers In fact, the close connection with the Creative Commons movement from someone that is a state minister, was key to that. But there were some other important elements too The Cultural Hotspots a project of the Ministry of Culture which the idea is to empower local cultural groups with: a broadband connection; digital multimedia infrastructure; and technical workshops on open-source audio and video-editing software The goal is to enable the cultural groups to digitize their creativity and publish it under alternative licenses mixing: free software, advanced concepts on copyrights, and some kind of a new awareness . But the ministry absorbed these new technologies, these new possibilities. Digital Culture as the Culture of Using these technical possibilities Which means the institution, the ministry, getting a hold of the many possibilities of interaction with its users making an intensive use of blogs, social networks, and interactivity This is the social network that the government The Ministry of Culture launched the CulturaDigital.BR which is a permanent platform for open and collaborative policy design It is also the very place where the Digital Culture Coordination which is a formal sector of the ministry, works. During this year we had some important open political processes hosted at the social network CulturaDigital.BR one of them is the collaborative policies for digital culture There is one project that is very dear to me which is the 'ecossystem for digital collections' a communication protocol to integrate digitization programs also the civil-rights based regulatory framework in a partnership with the Ministry of Justice . After the open collaborative process to build the proposal, it is about to be sent to congress for approval. and also the reform of the Brazilian Copyright Act We finished the open consultation, and the consolidation is being prepared to be sent to congress. There is also the National Broadband Program In this case, the social network is a kind of political avatar at the committee that evaluates the guidelines for the program. Brazil is in a very special moment Dilma Roussef won the election yesterday [YES!] Dilma was the one who launched the process of the Brazilian Digital Culture Forum so she is very connected with us it happened as she was the Secretary of State in 2009. In 2 weeks from now we will have the 2nd Edition of the Brazilian Digital Culture Forum which happens in Sao Paulo This one is called the network of networks, and will showcase the many developments of digital culture in Brazil We invite all of you to come we also invited Dilma, we hope she will be with us.. and we hope this will be a moment to celebrate digital culture and a projection of possibilities for the next term in Brazil. The opening will be with John Barlow and Gilberto Gil It will be very nice.. And I think.. that's all. I just have to say that this experience shows how culture and politics, blending, have a very interesting way of pushing the Commons into a new narrative. Thank you..