experiences with children at Praça da República (SP)

This research aims at understanding the uses and the appropriation of the urban space by children at a Municipal Kindergarten School in São Paulo, located at República Square, downtown. The theoretical references encompass the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and Francesco Careri. These authors point to the presence, in daily spatial practices of subjects, of appropriation experiences focused on the use rather than the dominant rationale of space production. Strolls, drawing and photographing of the República Square and its surroundings have been proposed to the girls and boys who have taken part in this research, as situations that subsidize the reflection of the experiences of appropriation. These situations are the basis for the analysis of relations established among adults, children and the surrounding space, with an aim at articulating them to social phenomena in wider urban contexts. As a methodology, we use the participant observation, present in the ethnographic perspective, besides the proposition for children to draw and photograph. The conclusion points to the existence of children appropriation of the space from a use standpoint, highlighting the contribution of researches with early childhood in urban contexts for the inclusion of subjects who have been historically made invisible in analyses of the forms of space production in cities.

creativity, movement, and subversion in children and adults

Art restores the meaning of the work, cites Lefebvre (1968), brings to urban society its meditation on life and offers multiple figures of appropriate times and spaces, not imposed and passively accepted. Under this prism, we intend, in this undergraduate research, to think about the dynamics established in the city and in art from the artistic production.
and in art from the urban graphic artistic production of adults and children relating them to childhood. The aim is to verify the production of graphic elements by adults and children in public spaces, the motifs portrayed, the way of relating to a certain work, the similarities and dissimilarities existing in different locations.

Among these relations, the following will be considered: the production of graphic elements in public space by the children themselves; the motifs portrayed; the perception / identification with the work of an adult; the variation of the data collected in central and non-central areas.

life in the city as told by Bolivian children in Kantuta Square

This paper aims at comprehending the perception that Bolivian children (daughters and sons of Kantuta Square workers) have of their lives in the city of São Paulo. Starting from the premises of the Sociology of Childhood, I aprroach children as subjects of the research, capable of talking about their own lives, providing valid views and experiences. Kantuta Square was chosen as the place for research for being frequented by the bolivian population, with great part of its public formed by families with children, besides being a stage of diverse cultural manifestations, as religious festivities, celebration of historic events, dance and music performances.Using a mixed method approach (drawings, photos and conversations with the children) I identified five most mentioned aspects by the children which will be analysed in this dissertation: 1) Relationship with Kantuta square; 2) Double identity and the  perception of Brazil and Bolivia; 3) The house; 4) The school; 5) Leisure and dreams. As most important, I highlight the children’s seclusion from the city, both by fear and by difficulties of access to leisure equipment, due to long distances and unaffordable prices, as well as their parents’ lack of time, considering they usually work from Monday to Monday. Leisure is much appreciated by the children and takes place mostly in front of the television or YouTube, besides indoor spaces such as Shopping D or the school. Kantuta Square is also characterized as a place for leisure, being one of the few public spaces whose use is described by the children and is connected to their parents’ work.

Their parents’ work plays a big part in their lives and is boldly present in their everyday lives. The sewing environment shares space with the house and on weekends the markets take up their days. The questions related to identity are embedded in many aspects of their lives, such as the way they live or repel cultural manifestations at Kantuta Square, the relationships they build with teachers and colleagues at school, as well as the picture they make of São Paulo and Bolivia.

daily life and childhood dreams

This work analyzes the daily life and dreams of the bolivian immigrant childrens of second generation living in the vertical occupation Prestes Maia, with the purpose of verifying how these boys and girls live infancy whose experiences transiting between Brazil and Bolivia, in being homeless, attending public school and especially in expressing their joking and ways of inhabiting the city and the occupied dwelling. The objective of this research is extended by bringing the narratives of the families of the children that exposes their trajectories as immigrants, especially the difficulties encountered in the city in relation to work and housing, leading them to participate in the Front for Struggle for Housing (FLM). The participant observation and semi-structured interviews (conducted with family members of the children and one of the coordinators of the Prestes Maia Occupation) occurred throughout 2016. The workshops that initially started in the Ocupação toyroom expanded into other spaces, such as stairs, slabs and patios, consisting of practices involving talk wheels, plays, drawings, photographs and fold of paper. The collected data were fundamental in the understanding of this new generation of immigrants that forms in a daily life permeated by difficulties and dreams of a better life, like the acquisition of the house. We confirm the hypothesis of a childhood that in its daily life reveals experiences that point to the composition of hybrid identities, transiting between Brazil and Bolivia and in search of their rights of children, such as playing and inhabiting the occupied dwelling.

relations between children from an EMEI in the city of São Paulo and the ethnic-racial representations in their drawings

This research aims to understand the relationship between children and the drawings they make concerning to ethnic and racial issues, taking these as a starting point to observe how racism can be built and made up since childhood. The field work, performed in a City’s Kindergarten School (EMEI) on the suburb of São Paulo, infers that cultural elements present in the drawings of girls and boys (such as traces of primarily straight hair and the absence of representations for colors of the skins in the drawings), and addressed questions on how to have curly hair and dark skin, might make reference to an undesired condition, especially for girls of 4 and 5 years-old. Although the teacher of the researched class is African American and is committed to the ethnic-racial debate, offering many references to Black characters and personalities, positive experiences regarding those issues are rare in the reality of these students, which incurs in institutional racism at this school appears as a backdrop and reinforcement for the feeling that many girls already have: they wish ardently a white aesthetics to be ethnically distinct from what is their natural characteristics: they want to be blond and have straight light hair.

arts in Playgrounds through Benedito Junqueira Duarte’s photographs

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Through Benedito Junqueira Duarte’s photographs, this research aims to observe the artistic expressions of the children that went frequently to the Parques Infantis1, between 1937 and 1938, when Mário de Andrade was Director of the Department of Culture of São Paulo. This department was part of a project idealized by a group of intellectuals of São Paulo which dialogues with great transformations that happened in the city in the 1930’s and which had as a goal to create a national identity through fomenting of the Brazilian popular cultures and its democratization across all the social groups with actions realized by the Department of Culture.

The Parques Infantis, a section of de Culture Department, were places where poor children received medical care and also were in touch with art and culture through popular dances, theatre, drawings, marquetry, embroidery and modelling. Dialoging with studies of historical context, photography and childhood, we analised the images that revealed us that the children expressed themselves artistically, knowing and gathering the Brazilian cultures.

the wall as a support for presences in times of social isolation

“Between subsystems and structures consolidated by various means (coercion, terror, ideological persuasion) there are holes, sometimes abysses” (LEFEBVRE, 2001), voids that, according to the author, are also “places of the possible”. The first hypothesis of this scientific initiation research is that urban public spaces and their architectural composition are configured not as neutral space, but as place of representations and belonging of people, a place of records that document and make the silenced speak. Thus, we intend to know the representations in the pandemic period in urban public supports from the current productions of urban artists. What narratives have been transmitted through the walls and streets of the cities? What are the techniques and supports used by and by the artists? Do they influence the way the subject is approached? When, how and in what ways are these interventions resisted or stimulated by the spectator public? By answering these questions, we can identify that that urban interventions carry in themselves communicative, informative, transforming power, and can be configured as “places of the possible”. Places of the possible because, despite being a territory of dispute, the records project other possibilities of reality, and because the wall is not unison.

https://youtu.be/CYFTAvs8-4w