BETWEEN THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND THE YOUNG PUBLIC

STRUCTURAL INVISIBILITIES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PAULO GUSTAVO LAW IN RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Abstract

The Paulo Gustavo Law (LPG) has established itself as the main cultural development policy in
Brazil during the post-pandemic period. This article therefore investigates its implementation in Rio Grande do
Sul, with an emphasis on the (in)visibility of young people among the 335 projects included. The qualitative and
quantitative research employed content analysis to classify the projects according to their youth focus and the
nature of the proposed activities. The results indicate an indirect and structural invisibility: only 17.9% of the
projects explicitly target young people, while 76.7% target the so-called "general public," making young people
an implicit, unnamed group and, therefore, intentionally overlooked by the policy. The origin of this phenomenon
was found to lie in the absence of the "youth" category as a predefined option on the application form, which
institutionalized their non-designation as a specific target audience and produced an invisibility based not on
exclusion but on an intentional lack of recognition. Furthermore, the data show a significant correlation (43.3%)
between the direct focus on youth and training projects, suggesting a policy tendency to view young people
primarily as learners. It can be concluded that LPG/RS, while encompassing a wide variety of social groups, such
as Black people, women, and LGBTQIAPN+ individuals, operated with a narrow conception of youth, relegating
their status as audience members and professionals already involved in the cultural field to the background.