Urbano Cultural Centre / Urbano Centro Cultural
Urbano is a cultural centre, which is part of the DNC´s Citizenship and Territory area. It focuses on homeless people and is open to the community in general. Ever since the initial steps of the centre in 2010 its internationally unprecedented concept has continuously developed, and nowadays there are plans to extend it to other Uruguayan towns. Its aim is the comprehensive development of the above-mentioned sector of the population through participation in activities related to education and production in culture and the arts. The creation of this space acts as a complement to policies, which focus on the homeless, and generates the capacities needed to exercise cultural rights and work towards social inclusion. To this end it concentrates on networking and cooperation with institutions and social and arts organisations to promote the creation of spaces for cultural education, consumption and production.
Urbano carries out its permanent network-based activities in cooperation with cultural organisations and institutions both State and community-based, and with the system of night shelters of the Ministry of Social Development´s (MIDES) programme for the homeless.
Since 2012 the centre has been moving beyond the confinement of its premises to take its proposal to almost all shelters of the system (thirty in total), where it organised artistic workshops and interventions, ranging from theatre, dancing and singing to percussion,theatre of the oppressed, literature and body language. Following the same line of action, it has been working to improve access to cultural goods and shows by facilitating cinema, theatre and concert tickets for a number of venues in Montevideo to the inhabitants of the shelters. To that end, it has been cooperating with the Esquinas de la Cultura (Culture at the corner) programme and with Borough B of the Municipality of Montevideo.
In 2015 it organised a series of activities called “Urbano en los museos” (“Urbano at the museum”), which began as part of a workshop and subsequently led to the creation of the “Colectivo Poética Urbana” (“Urban Poetry Group”), in charge of various performances featuring a variety of artistic languages in six important museums, where it shared the stage with outstanding Uruguayan musicians: Fernando Cabrera, Ana Prada, Alberto Wolf, Buceo invisible, Milongas extremas, Ernesto Díaz and Fabián Severo.
Urbano strives to strengthen its links with the community by reinforcing its participation in community culture networks and acting as a complement to public policies on the problem of “homelessness”, while drawing on its practical experience to generate knowledge.
The Urbano Cultural Centre plans to continue promoting the comprehensive empowerment of homeless people on the basis of their participation in activities related to education and production in culture and the arts. The aim is to promote the recognition of the cultural rights of persons and their exercise in order to improve social integration.
The annual budget of the Urbano Cultural Centre amounts to $38,700 dollars, about $29,000 of which are dedicated to human resources.