Barcelona City Council

Dear Xavier,

You have lived, worked and served culture in various areas, but always with the same passion and freedom. 

Barcelona is a cultural city thanks to a series of factors: the wealth brought by our tangible and intangible heritage, all the artistic creation that is produced around the city every day, our creative industries, the contributions made by citizen participation, and our cultural spaces and facilities. We have made a lot of progress in all areas, but there is still a long way to go. 

Therefore, our cultural policy must deal with a series of structural changes based on various key ideas: defending the freedom of cultural creation and production, a more substantial link between our local production and our international production, and a more stable framework between culture and economics, in order to ensure more secure cultural and artistic careers and avoid job insecurity.

As Councillor for Culture and Creative Industries, you should focus on the following priorities:

• Leading our commitment to increasing cultural audiences. Allocating some of the municipal tourist tax to the city’s public museums, so that admission can be free for city residents. Providing support for the cultural revitalisation of Avinguda del Paral·lel.
• Coordinating support for artistic creation. Expanding the Artist in Residence programme and the number of creation factories. Launching a digital impact triennial that includes artistic creation, thinking and involvement of art and culture in social transformations, incorporating the Biennial of Thought.  
• Fostering an improvement in the governance of cultural institutions. Creating a culture observatory so that the issue is at the centre of public policies. Helping to turn the Barcelona Design Hub into a consortium, so that it has greater visibility and a bigger budget, with the involvement of the Spanish and Catalan governments. Promoting the creation of a metropolitan cultural space. Developing Barcelona’s joint culture capital status.
• Fostering our cultural projection to the world. Promoting the Casa de les Lletres project in order to consolidate Barcelona’s international leadership in publishing, especially in the Spanish-speaking world. Normalising the city’s presence at major international cultural events.
• Helping to promote Barcelona Districte Cultural, continuing with the commitment to provide the city’s neighbourhoods with a greater cultural centrality.

Barcelona must position culture as a driving force for progress and community; in your case, I know that this goal is also a conviction and a commitment. 

 

Kind regards,