This project started with a collaboration between CIESPI at PUC-Rio and Østfold University College (OUC) in Norway, that produced a series of photographs illustrating the variety of childhoods in Rio in particular the differences between lower-income and middle-income childhoods. These photographs have been displayed in a variety of locations in Brazil and in Norway.
CIESPI staff then started to experiment with how the photographs could be used to help teachers elicit the thoughts and feelings of their young students. They developed a method of extracting from the photographs silhouettes of the children but concealing the rest of the context of the photographs. Children in classrooms were then invited to “complete” the silhouettes turning them into drawings which turned out to be very revealing of the children’s concerns. CIESPI and OCU have always seen the photographs and now the silhouette drawings of having the potential for informing public policy about children and thus allowing them to be participants in public policy arenas.
In the latest phase of the project, the CIESPI team is applying the methodology in a private school in Rio and Østfold University College colleagues are planning to do the same in a very diverse public school attended by a very diverse group of children (over 20 languages spoken in such school). Previously CIESPI has piloted the project in two municipal schools and one creche. In Brazil almost twenty percent of students attend private schools and CIESPI wishes middle class children and youth to be listened to and to be exposed to issues affecting other children. The current stage also includes plans for exchanges between Brazilian and Norwegian young people.
Project team
Coordination: Irene Rizzini - PUC-Rio/DSS; CIESPI/PUC-Rio
Executive coordination: Maria Cristina Bó - CIESPI/PUC-Rio
Executive coordination assistant: Claudia Mendes - CIESPI/PUC-Rio
Research and promotion:
Cristina Laclette Porto - CIESPI/PUC-Rio
Nathercia Lacerda - CIESPI/PUC-Rio