Barcelona Metropolis

There is a major challenge that is at risk of being overshadowed by climate change or gender equality: that of poverty and hunger. We shall discuss green culture or feminist culture, because the arts are already thoroughly addressing the matter, but what will be the culture of poverty?

The great challenges facing humanity will call for a parallel cultural change that will help create new habits and mindsets. Whether we are talking about energy transformation or climate change, the conversion of the labour market or gender equality, we need to roll out resources of all kinds, also in the realm of culture, to generate a new ecological, work and feminist awareness or whatever is deemed necessary. Furthermore, there is another great challenge that is at risk of being overshadowed: that of poverty and hunger, which will also affect the first world.

We shall discuss green culture or feminist culture, because the arts are already thoroughly addressing the matter, but what will be the culture of poverty? The question becomes rhetorical when we realise that it is very difficult to generate culture from poverty. And especially if the mental landscape of the poor ends up being hijacked by the mass media of the entertainment society, whether it’s trash TV, social media or the free internet.

Public education and free basic cultural services provided by libraries and community centres are essential to enable citizens to overcome their cultural poverty. But it will be impossible to turn poverty into a cultural wake-up call if we are not mindful of the poverty that affects culture itself; if we do not also tackle the precariousness that affects grassroots culture, which calls for institutional support to give itself structure and to grant poverty the expressiveness it needs to make itself visible.