Um olhar para a Política Cultural de Uberlândia: desafios e perspectivas para as Artes Cênicas - um estudo de caso sobre o Projeto Circo

Abstract

This research analyzes the construction of cultural policy in Uberlândia, focusing on the creation of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture in 1984, taking as a case study the history of the Traveling Cultural Center - Projeto Circo, which operated until the early 2000s. The author hypothesizes that Uberlândia's political elite does not invest in culture because they recognize the transformative potential that access to Education and Culture can bring to the population, aiming to maintain social class differences. To support this analysis, we bring the concepts of habitus, cultural capital, and symbolic violence developed by Pierre Bourdieu, as well as the concepts of cultural industry by Adorno and Horkheimer, and stigma by Erving Goffman. The reflections on Projeto Circo also included the collaboration of project participants through interviews. The results of the study indicate that, despite the municipality's economic capacity to value local culture, the movement has been the opposite. With increases in Brazilian inflation, which impacts service provision and consumption linked to the city's economic growth; the maintenance of the estimated annual budget negatively impacts the construction and maintenance of public policies for audience development and/or new artists, such as the project studied.