Recycling stories: Lessons from community arts-based process and exhibition in Brazil

Abstract

How can we create meaningful adult education and engagement opportunities for people who work in the recycling industry in Brazil and suffer marginalisation? This question guided the development of a series of community arts-based workshops and public exhibits in São Paulo. In this article, we share the stories of two workers from the recycling industry (i.e. recyclers), and describe how they experienced the potential of art-making and public exhibits. We worked in collaboration with an environmental adult education organisation that aims to expose the recyclers' realities of poverty, their difficult working conditions and their fight for greater visibility and social inclusion. The stories show how community created art exhibits constructed important visual meaning-making openings, attracted broad public attention and even provided income generation for those involved in the recycling industry.

Museum Hacking as a tool in critical pedagogy

“…• Empower students to challenge the apparatus of oppression and exclusion perpetuated by museum displays; • Generate dialogue amongst students and museum educators about the role of museums as sites in/for critical pedagogy; • Engage students in the dialectical methodology where they can bring their own personal knowledge and experiences to create their art interventions (de Oliveira Jayme, Monk, & Tremblay, 2016). • Expose the need for multiple diverse and inclusive stories to be shared in and through museum exhibits.…”

Promoting Inclusion and Justice in University Teaching

“…• Empower students to challenge the apparatus of oppression and exclusion perpetuated by museum displays; • Generate dialogue amongst students and museum educators about the role of museums as sites in/for critical pedagogy; • Engage students in the dialectical methodology where they can bring their own personal knowledge and experiences to create their art interventions (de Oliveira Jayme, Monk, & Tremblay, 2016). • Expose the need for multiple diverse and inclusive stories to be shared in and through museum exhibits.…”

Artistic Means of Social Change: Arts-Based Interventions for Addressing Marginalisation in a European Context

“…Expression of the role of the arts to this more individualised positioning of the problem is a matter of giving marginalised groups and community residents the tools for telling their own stories on their terms -hence to take upon themselves an active role as agents of change (Sarantou, Akimenko, & Escudeiro, 2018;Hyttinen & Taskanen, 2018;Miettinen, Sarantou, & Kuure, 2019;de Oliveira Jayme, Monk & Tremblay, 2016;De Piccoli et al, 2019). As a cornerstone in the preservation of Roma culture and heritage, it is also argued that, through art, the Roma can speak for themselves and create self-images in contrast to mainstream media representations of Roma people (Gunther, 2014).…”