When we talk about the creative economy in Brazil, it is still common to consider culture as an accessory, innovation as a promise and the favela as a setting. The most recent data dismantle this narrative. In 2023, the creative economy generated approximately 393 billion reais, or approximately 3.5% of the national GDP, and employing more than 7.7 million people. Its growth is higher than the average for the economy and already exceeds sectors considered traditional. It is not a question of a future vocation, but of a consolidated production sector.
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What rarely matters is where much of the energy that powers this market comes from. Language, aesthetics, music, fashion, audiovisual, digital communication and consumer behavior are largely born in Brazilian favelas and peripheries. The favela is not an appendage of the creative economy. This is one of its main drivers.
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However, a profound gap persists between symbolic production and economic performance. The favela creates value, but does not appropriate it. It produces trends that turn into brands, campaigns, products and platforms, but remains outside of contracts, credit, intellectual property and long-term structures. The result is a familiar paradox: creative power combined with financial fragility.
This imbalance is not the result of a lack of talent or initiative. It’s structural. The Brazilian creative market has been organized to capture value in the formal centers of the economy, while popular territories continue to operate in informality, intermittency and the logic of one-off projects. Culture becomes an event and not an asset. Creativity becomes a showcase and not an asset.
Meanwhile, the discourse of innovation remains focused on centers disconnected from the social reality of the country, on startups that speak English but do not know the territory and on public policies that still treat culture as a residual expense and not as an economic development strategy.
Financial sustainability in the creative economy does not imply romanticizing individual entrepreneurship in favelas or increasing the number of motivational workshops. It is about organizing the sector: transforming creation into an economic model, the project into a contract, the territory into an economic platform. This means recognizing that culture generates income, jobs, revenue and innovation when it exists in the presence of structure, governance and a long-term vision.
The data is available. Firjan, Observatório Itaú Cultural, IBGE and other institutions have already demonstrated that the creative economy is strategic for the country. What is missing is not technical evidence, but a political and economic decision. It remains to be admitted that there is no strong creative economy without being confronted with inequalities in the distribution of the value it produces.
Recognizing the favela as a creative space is not enough. It must be recognized as an economic space. This means access to adequate credit, fair contracts, legal protection, participation in the value chain and the ability to grow businesses without losing their identity or autonomy.
The favela does not claim a symbolic place. Claims an economic place. This is not a passing trend, but a permanent infrastructure for cultural production and social innovation. The future of the Brazilian creative economy depends less on new slogans than on the courage to reorganize who creates, who wins and who decides.
The favela is already creative. The challenge is to also make it financially viable within the country that consumes, celebrates and profits from what it produces.
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