Like the language we speak, culture distinguishes us, it is a form of expression, it is multifaceted and it is communication. Like the language we speak, culture belongs to us all. It belongs to a Portuguese-speaking world that wants to be broader, more plural and interconnected. It belongs to a Portuguese-speaking world that is all around us. It is also inevitably through it that we express ourselves, and so culture is often an act of resistance and of hope. Of political resistance, sadness, surrender. Of hope in the collective, in change and in love. After more than a year of resistance and hope, we asked those who create as a way of life to tell us how culture can be a vehicle for hope. Twelve people from five different fields –cinema, theatre, literature and the fine arts – accepted the challenge. As with culture and its representatives, the responses were varied, personal and different. In the end, a single culture cannot be a vehicle for hope. But a culture in which all voices are included will always be a symbol of hope.
By Lígia Gonçalves
Theatre
"Culture carries hope within and through itself. It is culture that allows us to identify, to belong and to recognise the other, just by looking at ourselves. Culture is also that which educates the collective, enables us to prosper and leads us to dream higher. Culture allows us to demand, experience, fight and grow. Culture, in the extent of access to it, is both the guarantor and a promise of a better society. For all these reasons, culture is the eternal symbol of hope.”
"An artist’s duty is to reflect the times” Nina Simone
I view artistic creation as a dialogue in power. Between society, what I create and society. There is always the hope of making this connection possible. It is always an invitation to reflect on what is and is not acceptable. The theatre as a house that transforms and allows itself to be transformed, trying at every moment to rescue the humanity that we often seem to lack. It forces us to stop and listen. And it is in that place of listening that the hope, the change, can come about.”
João Santana, Production Manager
"Culture is the reflection of life as it can be, without limitations of existence, time or place. It is an affirmation of all that we were, what we are, what we are not and what we can be. It is a record that we are not alone, and of how hopeful it is to know we can go anywhere.” Victória Guerra, Actress
"Culture is our identity, it is how we know ourselves and others, it is the tool that enables our critical senses and our growth as a community and society. Through it we define, express and respect ourselves and, above all, it is through it that we believe in a world that is always just around the corner. It is up to us to walk the path so our shoulders don’t drop as we create our common existence.”
Welket Bungué, Actor
"While not intrinsically nationalistic or traditionalist, culture can in fact weave a sense of hope and of self-empowerment. When we speak Portuguese, for example, and use it as a vehicle for interactive communication that has meanings that cross the various diasporas and communities that make up our country, we are faced with a bonding power. This is also why the arts and cultural agents are a humanist pillar that mirrors the state of development of a society’s socio-political perceptions.”
Literature
"Perhaps it is not so much a vehicle for hope as a form of consolation for oneself and for others. The books, sounds and images we love lift us out of the emotional misery into which we sometimes fall.”
"Culture is a vehicle for hope because it carries memories, critiques, reflections, dreams, creativity. And, above all, it is an affirmation of humanity. The result of the creative human gesture is a reference that allows us to believe: it is a means to the future. Through all forms of art, but especially through literature, we are carried on journeys, to live, and also to reflect and believe, making it a liberation.”
Music
"Culture is undoubtedly a vehicle for hope because it has within it all the tools required to bring help to those in need. Culture in itself involves education, achievement, motivation, responsibility and passion. In my work as a musician I always try to transmit this vehicle of hope to my fans and listeners through the passion and responsibility that I put into every tune. With every song I sing and every lyric I write I try to take my listeners to a better place and to give them comfort. And this is what also motivates me to carry on: knowing that whoever is on the other side is feeling, feeling my words and, if they are having a bit of a bad time, knowing that through them they can somehow overcome these difficulties or at least feel a sense of identity and hope. It is a hope that is also a belief.”
"How would we overcome this pandemic without books, series, films or music? With every passing moment we experience culture of one kind or another. A glimpse, a feeling, a memory triggered by a tune on Spotify.
What would be left if we removed every cultural stimulus from our daily lives?
Culture is the engine that defines us as people, the warmth of the soul that leads us to believe there is still hope for a better tomorrow.”
Fine Arts
Helena Mendes Pereira, Director of the Zet Gallery and lecturer at the University of the Minho
"Recently, at the end of a guided tour of a contemporary art museum with university students, one student said: "See you at the next class, God willing.” I interjected: "God has nothing to do with our classes, trips or cultural experiences. He does not and cannot. They are our decisions made freely.” Artistic creation has two authors in the communication process: it is the fruit of the creator’s thoughts, but it gains subjective meaning in the eyes of the recipient - the public. It is in this subjectivity, which is intended to be secular, that resides our hope and our faith. It is in this meeting that critical consciousness is created, which fosters the collectivisation of society and the belief that we all need to have in each other. This is the hope within art, in culture: its driving and transformational force, its potential to activate all the selves scattered in the post-modern solitude, its ability to change the world from the moment it transforms all those it touches.”
"I’m going to ask you to do an exercise: name a place where the rules of everyday life do not apply. A place where we can imagine other ways of being, other futures, other ways of seeing, where the past, present and the future are in constant dialogue, where everything is possible: love, desire, identity, community. Where every question is valid, where all knowledge is useful, where restlessness is the currency, where we prepare for... and rehearse... for what is to come. Art is, therefore, also hope.”
"Culture, in its many guises, is of enormous importance to me, not only in the understanding of society and our education as adults, but also as a way of breaking from our mundane daily routine. Art has the potential to inspire us, to carry each of us to our own magical place. For me, art is also a breath of fresh air. It invites us to reflect and to understand different points of view. It can help create new solutions and give us hope.”