Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes in state of emergency
13/11/2002
Santiago de Cali
November 6th, 2002
The Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes (School of Arts) has been seriously threatened and affected by the communications that Mr. Alberto Hadad Lemus, Secretary of the Finances for the Local Government, has made public in previous days concerning the budget reduction of a 35% for our entity. Equally worrying for us the fact that he strongly recommends the fusion of some of the faculties of the Institution with Valle University.
We, the students of the different faculties express our unconformity regarding these decisions, hence these are a crime against public education and against the artistic and cultural development of our region and that of the Nation being these, decisions which further more go against our Constitution. Bellas Artes is the only institution of the South western part of Colombia that is specialized in the teaching of these Arts and at the same time includes all the different educational levels in Colombia.
We, the students of the faculties of Visual and Applied Arts, Scenic Arts and Music, have decided to carry out permanent working programs or schedules inside the Institution, suspending the academic activities until the State government guarantees that our Institution or entity will not continue to be threatened by neither a reduction of the budget nor by the fusioning of it with another entity. These schedules programmed called ģARTS TAKES BELLAS ARTESī, will be on going during 24 hours a day, and we ask of the media to request of the Colombian community to support this movement of the students and also for the defence of a patrimony that concerns the whole nation.
