Oficina de Guimarães has lost more than one million euros

O president of the Workshop, which manages the main equipment and cultural spaces of Guimarães, says that in the last five years there has been a disinvestment in local culture and in this cultural cooperative, “devalued” in more than one million euros.

In an interview with the agency Lusa, one year after being appointed by the Chamber, Esser Jorge Silva argues that “the figures show” that in those years there was a decrease in the city’s funds for the cultural cooperative, which “has suffered an involution in its budget”.

“ This has a lot to do with what the municipality decided to do, which was to practically withdraw budget from the Workshop. Accounts made, The Workshop was devalued, between 2020 and 2025, in just over a million euros. We are now restoring and we will try to see if we have reached values in the post-European cultural capital period. But it will take some time to get it”, he assumes.

Created in 1989, the municipal cultural cooperative The Workshop currently has about 80 professionals in all areas and manages, in particular, the Vila Flor Cultural Center (CCVF), the José de Guimarães International Center of Arts (CIAJG), the Casa da Memória and the Centro de Artes e Ofícios dos Fornos da Cruz de Pedra.

When he arrived at the Workshop, Esser Jorge Silva faced “some displeasure with the good professionals”, caused by the disinvestment, before which they could do nothing, because the cooperative is held in almost 90% by the municipality of Guimarães.

“And therefore, it is up to the House to have a role as to its objective, to the development of its objective. And the Workshop was truly the object of disinvestment. There is no other way to say this”, defends the executive president of the cultural cooperative, admitting it is a political option of former executives led by Domingos Bragança (PS).

Jorge Esser Silva was part of the team that made the socio-cultural assessment of the European capital of culture, held in 2012, “one of the greatest events at the level of what was an idea of transformation of the municipality of Guimarães”, in Braga district.

“The city itself becomes a city of culture. I would say that, in recent years, I would say and say with certainty, in recent years there has not been, by the Workshop and by the culture in Guimarães, the same attention as in subsequent years, immediately after the European capital of culture ", stresses the sociologist.

Esser Jorge Silva says that one of his main objectives is to reverse “absolutely” this cycle of disinvestment, realizing that the budget for 2027 of the Workshop is not yet closed with the mayor of Guimarães, Ricardo Araújo (PSD/CDS-PP).

“ But the values that have been talked to the President of the House, and that in time will appear in budget, are a manifest appreciation of what is the Workshop and what is the role of the Workshop in the cultural programming of the territory ", reveals.

The goal is, according to Esser Jorge Silva, to fulfill the “great design” of the Workshop, which is “to keep up with all the programming with a great presence of education and cultural mediation”, adding that the cooperative does not want to work anything in the programming that has not coupled education and cultural mediation.

“ Our primary objective is to touch the general population, but, above all, to reach the schools, our students and provide the possibility of contact with the arts, so as to perceive or feel that there is work here towards the sensitive, the human. And, therefore, we think it is an important basis for human formation, of what our people, our people, the Vimaranenses”, explains the president of the Workshop.

Another of the changes that occurred during the last year “of much work” was the departure of Rui Torrinha from the artistic direction of the Vila Flor Cultural Center, after more than a decade, and the entry of Bruno Reis, who was already director of the Workshop Theatre.

Esser Jorge Silva assumes that it was a “choice” of his, validated by the president of the municipality and the councilor of Culture of the Chamber of Guimarães, exalting the work developed and the “dedicated professional” that was Rui Torrinha.

“ It was a separate decision, an agreement, it was nothing that was not talked about and that was not thus concluded by the parties ", justifies the president of the Workshop.