COVID 19 EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES
Culture – Lisbon
28 April 2020
Creation of a new type of support through the Social Service Emergency Fund Eligibility Rules - Section of support to Culture, in order to ensure the allocation of urgent and immediate support of extraordinary and transitory nature, aimed at protecting the cultural and creative activity of the city and to minimize the losses undergone by the respective agents, namely artists, technicians and mediators, and entities that carry out their activity in Lisbon, whose creative or artistic activity is effectively stopped or reduced in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both individuals and companies are eligible to apply to this financial support. There are € 250,000 for urgent and immediate financial support for agents and entities in the cultural and creative sectors of Lisbon who may be in serious financial and economic difficulty; - FES Culture EMERGENCY - and € 1,000,000 to reinforce the city's cultural programme to agents not covered by other support systems -FES Culture PROJECTS.
€ 200,000 for immediate support to be granted by Lisbon City Council to the City’s Fado Houses and respective artists for overall programming were also announced, including the following initiatives:
- A programme to be named conversations and fado, filmed in a controlled environment and broadcast through the existing social networks of the City Council of Lisbon, EGEAC and the Fado Museum.
Throughout this cycle, performers and musicians are invited to share memories and knowledge about the history of Fado, to select emblematic pieces of work from the Museum's collection, to pay homage to its artistic references and, above all, to share their immense talent with us. - Documentary in co-production with RTP
In partnership with RTP, the City Council of Lisbon is preparing a documentary about Fado Houses, to be recorded in 11 emblematic fado houses in the city of Lisbon. The individual episodes will be broadcast online on the social networks of the City Council of Lisbon and EGEAC | Fado Museum and the documentary will be broadcast by RTP. The funding is the responsibility of the city council.
These extraordinary measures shall be added to other, previously announced by the City Council of Lisbon for Culture, namely:
Rental payment exemption, until next June 30, for both cultural institutions and individual artists operating in municipal spaces;
- Guarantee given to cultural agents of the full payment of contracts already signed, namely by EGEAC, promoting, whenever possible, its rescheduling;
- Acceleration of payments to the cultural entities of the city that already receive support, with a view to supporting the maintenance of the respective operating structures;
- Reinforcement of the acquisitions fund in the area of fine arts and extension of its scope to the books and public art industry.
29 March 2020
Emergency Information – Covid-19
The Lisbon City Council is aware of the challenges that we are facing today, and therefore reaffirms that all financial commitments to the city's cultural agents will be honored.
Additionally, the Municipality of Lisbon announced a set of extraordinary measures to support families, companies and employment, which will cover the area of Culture. See: https://www.lisboa.pt/atualidade/noticias/detalhe/camara-de-lisboa-apresenta-medidas-de-apoio-as-familias-as-empresas-e-ao-emprego
Among the measures that include artistic and cultural agents, the following stand out:
- Fully exempt all social, cultural, sporting or recreational institutions installed in municipal spaces, including municipal studios, from the payment of rents until the 30th of June.
- Ensure cultural agents full payment for the contracts already signed, namely by EGEAC (company that manages the municipal venues), by rescheduling activities, adapting them for online transmission, or strengthening support for the entity's structure.
- Accelerate payment to cultural entities in the city that are already receiving subventions in order to support the maintenance of the respective operating structures.
- Extend the support system to agents and entities in the cultural sector that are not currently covered by municipal subventions, namely through the Social Emergency Fund.
- Reinforce the fund to support acquisitions in the field of fine arts and extend its scope to the sector of books and public art.
The Social Emergency Fund, is a municipal mechanism that until now has been used only for the social area and will now be extended to the culture sector.
We would also like to emphasize that Loja Lisboa Cultura maintains its specialized and free service to professionals and organizations in the cultural sector, on a non-face-to-face basis (email and phone). See: http://www.cm-lisboa.pt/polo-cultural-gaivotas-boavista/loja-lisboa-cultura
In addition to the usual information services in the tax, licensing, tax, support, social security, rights and international mobility services, among others, Loja Lisboa Cultura is also gathering specific information on all actions to assist the Culture sector, already taken either by the Government or by other entities such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
To that extent, through Loja Lisboa Cultura, we are also asking all organizations and cultural agents let us know their concerns and suggestions in order to more easily identify the most sensitive and most useful topics for the Culture sector.
