Mission

The Ministry of Culture (MC) is the government department whose mission is to define and implement a global and coordinated policy in the area of culture and fields relating thereto, namely, as regards safeguarding and enhancing the cultural heritage, encouraging artistic creation and cultural dissemination, qualifying the cultural fabric and internationalizing Portuguese culture. 

Duties

In the pursuit of its mission, the MC shall:

1. Safeguard and promote immovable, movable and immaterial cultural property, ensuring its classification and inventory;

2. Enhance the archaeological and architectural heritage;

3. Enhance museological spaces by involving the museum network;

4. Give prominence to testimonials which, irrespective of who supports them, have ethnographic or anthropological significance for the collective identity and memory;

5. Affirm an ethics of preservation and of standards and methodologies of conservation and restoration of heritage property that are of relevant historical, technical, artistic, ethnographic and anthropological interest;

6. Safeguard the bibliographic and documentary heritage;

7. Safeguard and enhance both the phonographic and moving image heritage;

8. Promote reading and the dynamization of the library network;

9. Define an integrated policy on the management of the documentation archive produced by the Public Administration and enhance the mission of the national archives as a repository of collective memory;

10. Consolidate public support for the creation, production and dissemination of the arts and for developing new audiences;

11. Qualify the cultural equipment networks, promoting the correction of regional asymmetries;

12. Consolidate Portuguese artistic production bodies, by ensuring their mission of enhancing both the cultural heritage and the Portuguese artists;

13. Enhance the cinema and audiovisual fields, by supporting advanced and innovative artistic creation, coupled with incentive measures for the sedimentation of a cinema and audiovisual industry;

14. Promote non-professional cultural activities;

15. Promote the cross-cutting character of culture through partnerships aimed at an effective integration of sectoral policies;

16. Promote the internationalization of Portuguese culture.  

(Decree-Law nº 215/2006 of 27 October 2006)