São Paulo
changing the city through protagonist participation
working with the line
“To inhabit, for the individual or for the group, is to appropriate something. To appropriate is not to own, but to make it one’s own work, to mould it, to shape it, to put one’s own stamp on it. To inhabit is to appropriate a space […] By this term [appropriation] we do not mean ownership; instead, it is something entirely different; it is the process by which an individual or group appropriates, transforms into their property, something external.”
Henri Lefebvre
A Ocupação 9 de Julho is one of the symbols of the fight for dwelling in São Paulo, capable of bringing together sectors of the intellectual and financial elite around the cause.
Nowadays, it is one of the most active occupations in the center of São Paulo, hosting a weekly routine of educational activities and cultural programs open to the public.
‘A Vila do Mañá’ emerges from the right to the city, as defended by Henri Lefebvre, so that the people who live in it have the right to enjoy it, to transform it and to reflect their way of understanding life in the community. From this point of view, how can we not include the right of children and adolescents to their city? For this reason, public space is considered a common space for learning and collective construction in which children and adolescents must also have a place.
Colour your city
The village or city in which we are working has been turned into a game board, a laboratory of experimentation where girls, boys and teenagers can act from a new point of view.