Bogotá will hold the International Biennial of Art and City of Bogotá, BOG25, between September 20 and November 7. Santiago Trujillo, Secretary of Culture, Recreation and Sports, explains the dimension and importance of this event for the city.
How are the Secretariat’s plans going?
2024 was about ideation, about affirming a development plan that gave culture, recreation and sports a relevant role and that understood the role that this sector has in economic development and also, if you will, in the generation and construction of confidence, pride and well-being.
The Bogotá Walk Safe Development Plan gave culture the possibility of directly influencing the construction of quality of life and the management of citizens’ happiness.
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What are the indicators?
At this moment, according to the Satellite Account of Cultural and Creative Economy of Bogotá, we generate more or less $19 billion of added value – the resource that drives the cultural economy in the city -, an amount that represents more or less 5.5% of the total of the city. Thus, 63% of Colombia’s cultural economy happens in Bogotá. Today Bogotá has established itself as one of the cities in Latin America with one of the most solid creative and cultural industries.
How is this reflected in the available resources?
We have a participation in the city’s general budget for 2025 of $1.1 trillion, of which only the cultural sector is $560,676 million. The percentage is close to just over 1% of the total.
What are the strategies to strengthen the sector?
We have several. We carried out an internationalization plan that was tied to major events. In the case of private initiative events, we facilitate the conditions to hold them. That’s why we had Estéreo Picnic in Bogotá, for example, and we managed to have a cultural agenda that few cities in the world had in terms of, for example, concerts in 2024. That will continue. And, we achieved a public agenda with a top-level cultural offer. The festivals in the Park were expanded from 7 to 10.
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And we carried out the International Festival of Living Arts, a new biennial event of high relevance for the theater as the Ibero-American theater once was and that we needed to rebuild. It generated more than 50 thousand attendees, sold tickets close to $1.3 billion, we achieved sponsorships close to $1.6 billion pesos and generated employment.
And now the Art Biennial appears?
We decided with Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán that in even years we would hold an International Festival of Living Arts (FIAV) and in odd years another great event of international metropolitan impact that would bring together the sector of the plastic arts, installation arts, design, architecture, art of new technologies, which is growing in Bogotá and needed a showcase. We believe that an Art Biennial can be an excellent outlet. It will be from September 20 to November 7.
What will this biennale be like?
The most recognized biennale in the world is Venice, but Sydney and São Paulo have it. For us it is almost like acquiring a kind of coming of age in cultural matters as a city, because a Biennial is the opportunity for reflection to be generated through the plastic arts, architecture, and design on how we inhabit and creatively occupy the world. public space.
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How are they prepared?
First we are talking with the city, in December the initiative was launched with Mayor Galán. Initially, we are going to have about 60 artists of enormous global relevance generating works of large, medium and small format.
What will the investment be?
It will be an investment close to $6,000 million, contributed by the Secretariat, plus what we are going to obtain from other public activities and other private activities. I can’t say the number yet, but we are on the right track.
Does the National Government participate?
At this moment it is a city initiative.
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Do you know what it will mean for the city?
We estimate more or less one and a half million visitors to the city on the days of the biennial. The figures that the FIAV gave us and the figures that other events have given us make us think very positively. As it is being done for the first time, I cannot say a figure, but those of Sydney or São Paulo can even represent one or two points of the GDP, for what they generate in terms of direct and indirect services, in terms of hotels, gastronomy and sales. We hope to get there, it probably won’t happen in the first version, but a project of not only cultural but economic growth and revitalization of the image of Bogotá in the world is being established.
CONSTANZA GÓMEZ GUASCA
Portfolio Journalist
