Formentera starts work on local plan for culture

foto 2021 pla de culturaFormentera’s heads of culture and heritage, Susana Labrador and Raquel Guasch, respectively, met earlier today with department staff and representatives of the International University of Catalonia (UIC) and adult learning centres of Menorca to prepare a local masterplan for culture. The initiative was baked into an agreement struck at a one-off full-house assembly, 6 October 2020, and focussed on the state of local affairs.

Councillor Labrador said she hoped the initial planning stage would drive “multilateral diagnosis of the current state of culture on Formentera and, from a place of shared responsibility, define strategic priorities and future avenues to promote culture locally”. “We want to take the temperature of culture on Formentera”, she said, “to set strategic lines for the future based on what we want to maintain and what we want to strengthen and prioritise”. Participants in this initial phase will develop specific objectives in support of each strategic priority, recommendations for targetted actions, and a list of stakeholders, associations and entities which could potentially be involved in each proposal.

Citizen participation
The Consell de Formentera will oversee preparation of the plan, with principal engineers including Jaume Gomila, president of Escoles d’Adults de Menorca; Sergi Sánchez, an expert in the field; Judith Urbano, the dean of UIC’s Faculty of Humanities; Marta Crispí, the director of the Master’s in Cultural Management, and Maria Morer, a researcher. The team spent a week surveying local cultural spaces and considering future facilities. During that time, they also sat down with and heard proposals from organisations and cultural insiders on the island.

The resulting plan will shape the future of cultural events on Formentera and create a pact for culture with the consensus of islanders, institutions, political groups with representation in municipal government and locally based cultural groups. It will also cement an organisational structure to guide implementation of the Culture Plan and its stewardship moving forward.

28 July 2021
Communications Department
Consell de Formentera