Morelia is a UNESCO Creative City of Music in Mexico. Having identified music as a priority sector, the city uses music as a lever for development. To further promote and develop its creative industries, the city also recently established a local Secretary of Culture.
In line with the city’s strategic development plans that emphasize cross-cutting initiatives and events, the city of Morelia launched a new campaign #CulturaEnTuCasa (Culture in your home) amidst the confinement measures put in place due to the COVID-19. The initiative aims to further create synergies between art teachers and cultural institution and offer a week-long music programme dedicated to families.
With the hashtag #CulturaEnTuCasa, the initiative invited art teachers and artists from the city to record micro-workshops from their home and share them via ‘video capsules’. These were subsequently posted on the city’s social media platforms, daily at 11am and 6pm for a week. In a second phase of the initiative, teachers and other cultural practitioners are being provided with the opportunity to follow specific tutorials on video making, so as to enable them to continue developing more micro-workshops, in case of the extension of the confinement measures.
The submitted workshop videos bear witness to the diversity of Morelia’s cultural life and include topics in relation to folk guitar, ballroom dancing, mural painting, literary creation, reading aloud and mime, amongst many others. In order to further assist cultural practitioners during the crisis, the city guarantees the participating artists and craftsmen an average financial contribution in return.
Through this project, the city has found an original way to support its cultural practitioners while providing a diverse cultural programme to its inhabitants.