As part of the Regional Secretariat for Education and Culture, the Department of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) is the governmental organism with the mission of carrying out and coordinating the different projects that result from the policies defined and adopted for the cultural area.

Thus, from the Patrimony to the Arts, from Museums to Libraries and Archives, and necessarily through contemporaneousness areas, always with the creators support, as well as with the promotion of a high quality cultural offer and accomplishment of initiatives able to maintain a progressive creation of cultural publics, directly or indirectly, these are some of the areas in which, the Department of Cultural Affairs as entity in charge or as mediator, stands at serving culture in Madeira.

Presently, the availability of a portal site like CULTUREDE will allow Madeira's culture to be in a direct and connective electronic platform, which will enable our culture to be known and enjoyed by a potentially unlimited public. From now on, we believe it will be possible to achieve a dimension, up to now, unreached by the cultural offer provided by us and by the agents and cultural entities working in Madeira.

Therefore, we want to leave a special welcome greeting to everyone who visits and accesses our portal site. We trust that the site contents here gathered are truly useful to every user and hopefully, Madeiran Culture will become more well-known and strengthened from those contacts and through their promotion. Above all, may this website influence the culture that nowadays is made in Madeira: 'when two realities come together, the access to the world’s citizenship is much easier.'

João Henrique Silva
Director of Cultural Affairs