Good Practices refers to innovative processes, methodologies, or techniques, preferably aligned with development agendas. These practices embody the knowledge, skills, and experience accumulated by the District Institute of Arts - Idartes in developing innovative solutions for specific needs. Systematizing these good practices involves a continuous and cumulative process of knowledge creation in a participatory manner, drawing from the intervention experiences of each area or program.
This process significantly contributes to internal learning and improvements in institutional performance. It also facilitates mutual learning and the exchange of experiences, along with the gathering of evidence to support decision-making. Ultimately, it promotes problem-solving and resource optimization.

Nidos (Nests)

Nidos, art in early childhood is a program by the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes) for young children (0 to 5 years), pregnant people, their families and educational and cultural professionals. Its main objective is to contribute to comprehensive development and guarantee of cultural rights in early childhood. It is an innovative initiative in a country that has, since 2013 been striving to guarantee artistic experiences, works, content and adequate spaces for young children and their carers in the city of Bogotá. It provides these groups with opportunities to explore, play, create, express themselves, participate and socialize through art and its many languages.

In addition, the Nidos Program benefits educational and cultural professionals, such as educators, teachers, artists, librarians, health workers, mediators and cultural managers, among others, who are involved in processes of early childhood comprehensive care and education in the city. These groups can enhance their professional practices, through the knowledge building processes based on art, play and cultural rights. The program trains 1,000 educational and cultural agents every year, with over 260,000 total beneficiaries since its launch.

Crea (Create)

The Crea Program is the central pillar of the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes) to support the training and artistic creation processes of children, young people and adults in the capital. Its objective is to widen opportunities for the enjoyment and ownership of artistic practices in different community environments in the city, through training processes.

The artistic training programs in the Crea Program put cultural rights and the exercising of these into practice, by guaranteeing the creation of scenarios to explore the development of aesthetic sensibility and to symbolize and create communicable meanings of life, which contribute to the construction of identity and critical, imaginative and diverse citizenship.

This is achieved by encouraging the recognition and exploration of individual, local or community knowledge in dialogue with expressions from other sources and communities, through the use of different art languages. Thus, the participants in the training processes find a space to observe and experience their own and others' cultural expressions, and in this way build expressive and critical tools that allow them to narrate and express themselves in the exercise of their rights.

Culturas en común (Common Cultures)

Institute of the Arts (Idartes) program, of a local nature, which promotes the visibility, recognition, advancement and adoption of cultural rights through the strengthening of socio-cultural and community processes that use art as a mediator for social transformation in different communities in Bogotá.

Through flexible, collaborative and replicable methodologies, Culturas en Común takes ownership of the "street", public or private infrastructure and other non-conventional spaces in Bogotá's localities, to promote the encounter between diversity, strengthening the link between local residents, artists, cultural managers, cultural and social organizations, and public and private institutions. Through artistic practices and the dialogue of expertise, these groups build a social pedagogy of cultural rights, while furthering the democratization of culture in the city.

The Culturas en Común program aims to foster processes of training, creation, ownership, sharing and research of art and culture, with and for local residents. This is done in local participation and consultation spaces, promoting cultural rights and encouraging continued collaboration across a network of public and private organizations. The following specific objectives are defined for this purpose, through three components: A. Local and community management component; B. Artistic management component; and C. Knowledge management component.

Festivales al Parque (Festivals in the Park)

The festivals serve as a platform for acknowledging and fostering diverse perspectives within youth cultures. They celebrate the emergence and prominence of artistic movements that shape or rejuvenate these varying viewpoints on our societies. They are recognized in Bogotá, Colombia, Latin America and the rest of the world as city events that recognize the diversity of genres of musical culture. They integrate these genres into the current panorama of musical creation and help to strengthen the perception and idea that it is possible to have a space for the connection and coexistence of diverse and constantly changing communities, aesthetics and urban sounds, which is free of charge for attendees and creators.

The festivals have conveyed and continue to convey an explicit and powerful message on respecting difference and the possibility of working together to build a better society for everyone, starting from cultural, social, ethnic, community and artistic differences.

Libro al Viento (Book in the Wind)

Libro al Viento is a program that promotes and encourages reading, which began in 2004 in Bogotá. It aims to provide free literature to the local population, starting from the fundamental principle that reading should be everyone’s right and accessible to everyone. The main principle of Libro al Viento is that its books are public property of all residents of Bogotá and can therefore be shared among local readers.

The reading promotion program Libro al Viento aims to guarantee the free and equitable development of local residents by providing free access to quality world, Latin American and Colombian literature. In this way, it diversifies perspectives on the world and facilitates the dialogue between literary texts and the community through reading promotion strategies. Through its publications, the program contributes to the right of ethnic and linguistic minorities to share their cultural life, using their own language. It contributes to local resident’s access to different cultures from within the country and around the world through bilingual publications, fostering interculturality, promoting cultural cooperation and democratizing access to virtual or printed books as a means and tool for cultural action, contributing to the exercise of cultural rights.
 

Escuela de libreros (Booksellers School)

The Escuela Distrital Libreros (District Booksellers School) is a project by the Literary Management of the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes). There have been three editions of the project (2021, 2022 and 2023) in collaboration with the Asociación Colombiana de Libreros Independientes (Colombian Association of Independent Booksellers). This workshop aims to create a training space for the profession and the work of booksellers, based on their key role in providing assistance, orientation and support when it comes to readership practices in the city, the publishing offering and the different ways of reaching readers.
This program was created given the importance of bookstores and booksellers as mediators in the book chain and the need for constant reflection on their endeavor. Their importance as a qualified forum for interaction with books must be valued. The way of understanding the relationship between the booksellers’ profession and the bookstores’ duty establishes a shared path with readers. It is an ongoing exercise, which is creative and imaginative, yet tangible, which offers new paths and strategies to make bookstores profitable businesses and lively places thanks to a growing customer base. Bookstores are evolving. They have gone from being places for selling to places for meeting and spending time. As in the case of bookstores that have a café. As bookstores evolve, so do customers, who will go from being a simple supermarket shopper to someone who participates in the community. In this aspect, the role of booksellers becomes especially relevant, because they should encourage customers to become part of this community.

Galería Santa Fe (Santa Fe Gallery)

 

The Galería Santa Fe is a public project to promote the exchange of artistic practices, knowledge and experience developed by Bogotá’s plastic and visual artists. It is coordinated by the Plastic and Visual Arts Management of the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes).

 

 

Orbitante (Orbiting)

With the objective of promoting dance creation, the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes) through its Dance Management launched the program Orbitante Plataforma Danza Bogotá (Orbiting Dance Platform Bogotá) in 2019. This is an ecosystem made up of dancers, choreographers, directors, teachers, designers, producers, managers, groups, companies and organizations, from the different dance languages that inhabit the city: urban, traditional, contemporary, classical, and popular, among others. 

The Plataforma Orbitante Danza Bogotá is based on the fundamental objective of the subfield of the arts to strengthen the conditions for the exercise of the practices of the subfield of the arts in order to make it broad, diverse, inclusive and accessible. This subfield, as stated in the Ten-Year Cultural Plan (SCRD, 2012-2021), is made up of dimensions that, as convergence centers of the different artistic areas, enable the identification of problems, strategies and actions for the advancement of artistic practices in the city.

For this purpose, strategic objectives are also proposed, which aim to facilitate exchanges, expressions, knowledge building, sustainability, representation and other efforts to strengthen creation.

Salas concertadas (Local Theaters)

The Salas Concertadas District Program is a strategic partnership that is carried out annually with the city’s theater and circus halls. It supports reputable non-profit entities that have a theater or circus hall for the sharing of artistic practices by groups in the city.

Its main objective is to strengthen the performing arts sector, through projects promoting art, culture and the management of performing arts venues in Bogotá. It fulfills the criteria of decentralization, coverage, quality, proximity, accessibility and sustainability, guaranteeing local residents access to a broad and diverse artistic offering, with a local and district-level impact.

The program has been implemented through the public-private partnership scheme, through which the State provides financial support for artistic projects that are independently developed and implemented by a non-profit entity (ESAL). It is recognized in the theatrical sector and guarantees access to residents of Bogotá to a public platform for cultural activities. In return, the organizations offer access to the theatrical space for groups without their own venue, furthering processes of exchange, audience development or training of professionals in the theatrical field, among others. From its inception to 2017, the program’s implementation and resource allocation was done through an agreement between the district institute and the organizations in charge of the spaces, in a round table called the program committee, where the participating entities defined the most relevant aspects to be taken into account for the allocation and distribution of resources. 

Festival de Teatro y Circo (Theater and Circus Festival)

In recent years, the Bogotá Festival de Teatro y Circo has become the city’s most important platform for the sharing and showcasing of theatrical production, due to its longevity, impact and track record. 

Likewise, it has been establishing itself as an eagerly awaited event by local residents, since, during its 18-year history, it has reached stages and audiences in different neighborhoods in the city. The festival began with a focus on the different genres of theater until 2020, when it evolved and gave a decisive place to the different circus practices as a platform that recognizes these two fields of performing arts.

The festival has historically been led by the Asociación de Salas (Association of Theaters) and Idartes. This was the only entity that was able to carry it out, given that this initiative was conceived by this group of theaters in 2002.

Es Cultura Local (This is Local Culture)

Es Cultura Local was established in 2020, within the context of the Local Economic Mitigation and Reactivation Strategy (EMRE), in which the Government Secretariat; the District Secretariat of Culture, Recreation and Sports; the Gilberto Álzate Avendaño Foundation (FUGA); the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes) and ten local councils in Bogotá took part. In its first iteration, the program aimed to support, reactivate and strengthen 259 groups and small businesses in the cultural and creative ecosystem of the city. This was due to the economic impacts on the sector as a result of the health emergency caused by the covid-19 pandemic. For this reason, Idartes’ expertise was relied on for the implementation of the District Stimulus Program, which facilitated the awarding of financial resources to the successful applicants.

Through the Beca Es Cultura Local (This is Local Culture Grant) program, 1,037 applications were received, from which 259 were selected as recipients of economic stimuli amounting to $10,766,944 COP in the seven participating localities. This benefitted around 175 small businesses and eighty-four groups in the cultural and creative field, which positively impacted on the well-being of 10,024 direct and 1,234,480 indirect beneficiaries.

Cinemateca al Parque (Cinematheque in the Park)

Temporada Cinemateca al Parque (Cinematheque in the Park Series) is a project that arose with the aim of implementing public policy actions to promote the guarantee of cultural rights and access to a cultural experience based on the audiovisual and artistic practices of the residents of Bogotá. 

This cultural sharing and audience mediation project was created with the intention of decentralizing the management, programming and mission of the Bogotá Cinemateca, Audiovisual Arts Management, beyond the cultural center, expanding the offering to other neighborhoods in the city through free admission events that are adapted to the local dynamics of each area. 

The Temporada Cinemateca al Parque has been a project that has provided access to audiovisual screening and artistic practice events for people from the twenty localities of Bogotá, contributing to the decentralization of the activities of the Bogotá Cinemateca, Audiovisual Arts Management. 

This project has also brought many local residents closer to the Bogotá Cinemateca and has promoted the recognition and recruitment of new audiences for Colombian audiovisual content.

Cinemateca Rodante (Rolling Cinematheque)

In 2012, the Cinemateca Rodante strategy began as a set of programs aimed at the localities of Bogotá. It included activities of a community nature, based on previous assessments, offering memory, sharing, entrepreneurship and training programs that promote audiovisual development.
In this way, its main objective is to design a comprehensive strategy of a community nature for audiovisual development in the city, which generates access, ownership and participation.

The Cinemateca Rodante community audiovisual development strategy now has nearly 3,000 beneficiaries, including individuals, collectives and inter-institutional actions, who demonstrate the impacts of the project.

Likewise, the outreach nature of the strategy has established this project as a permanent initiative for approach and access to the Audiovisual Arts Management of Idartes, for the local population through different cultural activities, related to audiovisuality.

Ciclo Rosa (Pink Cycle)

During its twenty-two editions, the Ciclo Rosa has followed a transformation in the aesthetics and narratives of audiovisual creation, which oscillate between different film genres, multiple aesthetic formats and different ways of narrating and representing the body, sexuality and gender through the audiovisual. In this way, the Ciclo Rosa has become a meeting space centered on certain ways of understanding the transformations of audiovisual arts and the experiences, problems and ways of understanding ourselves as a diverse society in two ways. It was created in 2001 as an initiative of the Bogotá Cinemateca, the Goethe Institut, the Centro Colombo Americano de Medellín and the Universidad Javeriana, with the aim of representing LGBTQI+ audiovisual cultures through audiovisual media.

The Ciclo Rosa has contributed to an improvement in the participation and diversity of audiovisual productions in Colombia. This can be seen both in the increase in the production of the National Showcase and in the participation of collectives at the national level. It is also noticeable in the audience types that attend the Ciclo Rosa, which are becoming broader. 

 Laboratorios de Arte, Ciencia y Tecnología (Art, Science and Technology Labs)

The Laboratorios de Arte, Ciencia y Tecnología are spaces for knowledge building through creation and experimentation covering a variety of topics and disciplinary fields. They are part of the interdisciplinary programming of the strategic plan and its respective programs Plataforma Bogotá and CKWEB.
They are an innovative and unique offering on a district level, which enable access and ownership by diverse audiences (children, adolescents, adults, and elderly people) of scientific and technological language through the arts. 

The Laboratorios de Arte, Ciencia y Tecnología have contributed to the development and training of national artists and creators; consolidated a specialized community of art, science and technology on a district level; and created conditions for access, use, ownership and exchange of knowledge and expertise in art, science, technology and innovation.

To date, more than 160 labs have been carried out, which have explored the convergence of art, science and technology through different topics including: UFO-NERD Science Fiction Lab, Microphones, Creation and Hacking, Videomapping, Open Furniture Lab, Interactive Costumes Lab, and expanded content creation lab for Domes, among many others. 

Domo lleno (Full Dome)

The Domo Lleno festival is an international in-person event that was created with the purpose of promoting audiovisual and sound exploration, research and experimentation in fulldome formats. 
It is held annually in the dome of the Bogotá Planetarium and lasts between 4 to 5 days. Each edition features a different academic and experiential program, consisting of talks, labs, artistic events, concerts and fulldome film screenings and works.

Since 2017, the festival has established itself as the first and only space nationwide that promotes the creation and sharing of audiovisual and sound productions and works designed for domes. It establishes the city of Bogotá as a leader in Latin America in innovation and new media for the creation and projection of fulldome works.

Astrobebés (Astrobabies)

The Bogotá Planetarium brings babies closer to astronomy through songs, stories, videos and other elements in different artistic labs. 

Astrobebés is a space created for babies to enjoy activities designed for them; the idea is to strengthen their exploration processes through their senses. This experience will offer us learning opportunities in attitudes and procedures relating to science: investigative spirit, capacity for observation, analysis for problem solving and the creation of hypotheses.