Approvement of the final version of the document built with the participation of cultural agents and the community of the 17 municipalities.

On 30 June 2023, the Porto Metropolitan Council, comprising the 17 mayors of the municipalities that make up the Porto Metropolitan Area, unanimously approved the final version of the Metropolitan Charter for Culture for 2023-2028.

The Metropolitan Chart for Culture 2023-2028 is intended to be the main instrument for drawing up, implementing and analysing Culture in the Porto Metropolitan Area, and is the result of a pioneering and ambitious process to implement on a regional scope the principles of participation and cultural democracy and citizenship, in line with the recommendations of the Porto Santo Charter (2021), as well as other European guidelines, based on local realities.

To get to know, to share, to invest, to prompt, to appreciate, to promote, to communicate, to position, to empower and to bring closer are the actions that establish the 10 Guiding Principles of metropolitan culture policies, with 4 strategic priorities to consider over the next five years: Cultural Heritage appreciation and encouragement to contemporary creation; mapping of the metropolitan cultural sector and creation of a Metropolitan Platform for Culture; training and capacity-building; regional and international cooperation.

This document, born out of the desire of the Porto Metropolitan Area to go further in the cultural field, is the result of a consultation and dialogue process that began in May 2022, gathering municipalities, cultural agents, researchers and citizens, which remained open, participatory and continuous, as a way of broadening the debate and reflection and bringing the community into the decision-making processes.

The international conference organised by the Porto Metropolitan Area in May 2022, which brought together decision-makers, technicians, organisations, students, researchers and professionals from the cultural sector, as well as the community itself, for an initial debate on the place of culture in local policies, resulted in a first draft of the document, known as the "Zero Version".

After an extended period of public consultation, the Zero Version of the Charter served as the starting point for 17 public debate sessions with cultural agents and the community in each municipality of the Porto Metropolitan Area. The debates gathered more than 420 participants between January and March 2023, including professionals and amateurs from the cultural sector, mayors and municipal officers, over 200 associations, 150 citizens and 20 companies. Their contributions were reconciled with the Zero Version in a shared review exercise, proposed and preliminarily approved at a meeting of the Metropolitan Council of Councillors for Culture in May 2023.

The final version of the document, as well as its short or summarised version, known as the "Manifesto", both now approved, establish a set of strategic guidelines and priorities to be implemented between 2023 and 2028, in a shared commitment with the 17 municipalities, cultural agents and the community, who, together with the Porto Metropolitan Area, are simultaneously co-authors of the document, co-responsible for its implementation and its main recipients.

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