Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Policies on the right to health and education played a key role in helping towards equality between people in the 20th century. Now Barcelona’s municipal government is unveiling its ‘Fem cultura!’ plan in a bid to put cultural rights on par with other basic rights. Nine government measures and a hundred different actions are to be implemented between now and 2023.

‘Fem cultura !’ is a pioneering plan to ensure access to culture, participation and the right to contribute to the city’s cultural life, as well as the recognition and expansion of cultural rights in Barcelona through new public policies. The plan will be implemented between now and 2023, with a budget of 68.7 million euros.

Specific measures to foster and guarantee culture

The cultural rights plan includes specific measures based on public policies to recognise these rights, founded on basic principles which run right through the project such as interculturality, the feminist perspective, transparency, multiple perspectives, decentralisation and new centralities, metropolitan culture and sustainability.

Notable measures include the implementation of the so-called ‘sixth hour’ as an extra hour for artistic activities; free admission to museums to visit their permanent collections; a boost for existing programmes which fit in with the philosophy of the plan, such as Barcelona Districte Cultural, En Residència, the reading action programme at public libraries and science or artistic residencies; a boost to new initiatives giving prominence to creators, such as Beinnal Manifesta or the new grant programme; the creation of the Casa de la Música; a boost to the REC cultural currency for people to take part in cultural activities in the city, and the programme to put officially protected ground floor premises to cultural use.