Cota 1.20 – wanderings of a group of children from OSMOPE School through Rua Mouzinho da Silveira
“Cota 1.20” is an exhibition developed with children from OSMOPE School, that strengthened their identity and sense of belonging towards the city, achieving a more sustainable, meaningful and respectful connection with the planet.
Working from the eye level of 1.20m, there are drawings, photos, videos, sounds, words, modular and paper constructions.
After an extensive field research and co-creating with the designer, the project was constructed and presented at MNAC Lisbon and MHNC-UPorto.
National
Portugal
Porto, Lisboa.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): OSMOPE - Social Organization Movimento Pontes Educativas - Nursery, Kindergarten and Primary School Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Silvia Last name of representative: Berény Gender: Female Nationality: Portugal Function: President Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Rua de Costa Cabral 220 Town: Porto Postal code: 4200-208 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351 934 341 365 E-mail:secretaria@osmope.pt
“Cota 1.20” is an exhibition developed with children from School OSMOPE, that strengthened their identity and sense of belonging towards the city, achieving a more sustainable, meaningful and respectful connection with the planet.
It is an exhibition project of itinerant nature, built in the context of our school and which included a total of 75 children from 4 to 9 years old, as well as adults from different scientific areas.
Working from the eye level of 1.20m, there are drawings, photographs, videos, sounds, words, modular and paper constructions.
After an extensive field research, and co-creating with the designer, the project was constructed and presented at Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea Lisbon and Museu História Natural e Ciência U. Porto.
During the construction process, we had always in mind the capacity of young children, as full-citizens, of reflecting, analyzing and giving their opinions.
We have worked using different collaborative methodologies, making partnerships with Universities and Museums, using Design as a mediator through all the stages of the process.
The children were provoked to go on the field, exploring the street “Mouzinho da Silveira”, promoting an early relationship between children and communities – with urban places, functions, people and their stories – as well as with the architectural notions of design, graphics, dimensions and scales -, the characteristic proportions of the inside/school and the outside/street, materialized in an in-between/museum. This process leaded the children to discover the river “Rio de Vila” that now flows pipped hidden under the pavement of the street, in a non-natural way. The impact of this artificial situation that was created by humans is now creating problematic overflows of water in that area.
It is important to give voice to the early childhood to have a more inclusive, healthy and equitable world, creating awareness to the climate problems and promoting social participation.
Early-Childhood
Arts & Design
Partipatory Methodologies
Climate and Social Awareness
Public Space Intervention
The sustainability is a main concern in all our school projects, either in the focused thematics involved, as in the way we usually lead the working processes.
With this exbihition, we have promoted children’s foundational skills for lifelong learning about the importance of having a respectful, informed and conscious relation with nature, urban environment and communities.
Children are often confined to the private area of their school, leisure time institutions and the family context, thus having few opportunities to get to know, live and intervene is their urban area, which is by definition open and polysemic. Consequently, it is necessary to provide new ways for children to relate to their city and to get to know other experiences, in order to develop transversal competences of recognition and respect for diversity, communication and sustainability.
In the whole process of creating “Cota 1,20”, children and adults were committed with a conscious use of natural resources.
Children decided that the exhibition materials should be designed to last, and be used more than one time. Everything was designed as a modular system, in order to make it packable in boxes of 40 by 40 centimeters. That said, all the exhibition - that is intended to be itinerant - is very flexible and quite adaptable to different spaces, structures and contexts.
We intended to have a smaller impact in the ecological path, not neglecting the quality and durability of the produced materials. For that, we have chosen materials that are either recycled of recyclable.
Children were heavily involved in the discovery of nature and the way the territory is constructed, making them aware of the impact of human construction and options in the wellbeing of our planet.
As an itinerant exhibition, we are sharing this experience in different Museums, cities, and contexts, hoping others to absorve and reflect about this problems and inspiring other schools to this kind of challenges.
All this project was built through Design methodologies, placing the Design - and a Designer that works inside the school - in the neuralgic center of all the network, mediating the working processes for children and adults, at the museums and university.
That said, the competences of design in terms of communication and being able to provoke positive emotions to the visitors of the exhibition were widely worked.
Design was a privileged partner for this cultural mediation, facilitating the construction of dialogues between the different agents, and making available its tools for the interpretation of the children's voice, and in the production of objects, devices and interfaces. The nature and relational capacity of Design is assumed as an integral part of the project, in a co-creation, never losing the essence of the various languages of the child, their knowledge and learnings, but assuming its presence throughout the entire process, as well as in the final exhibition.
Design's communicative strategies also facilitated the success of an aesthetic education, in a holistic approach and intervention in the public space that corroborates the statement that Design is today " (...) more than appearance, design is about interaction, strategy and services. Designers change social behavior.” (Norman, 2011, s. p.).
The aesthetic education was very important in this educative processs. All the aesthetics were carefully handled, from the begging of the research to the most small details of the exhibition. The graphic materials that mediated the relation between the public and the content were carefully designed and aligned with a very strong graphic line and pedagogical intentionality.
This way of developing children’s communication skills, with sensitivity and self-expression, are important if we want to create new discurses about education, contributing to transform the role of school and its partners in this new society.
Europe is a huge mosaic of diversities, cultural contexts and levels of prosperity, knowledge and experience. European cities show great diversity among themselves, in relation to economic activities, housing or even in population characteristics. In recent decades we are assisting to the climate changes that effects all of us. If we are able to begin the discussion of all this effects with children, we believe that we can create awareness in the younger ones.
All the project was designed since the beginning using participatory and collaborative methodologies. The team included children, teachers, designers, architects, museologists, geographers, all in a collaborative process that fed a cross fertilized process between everyone.
It was developed to reach the most wide public as possible and designed to receive and integrate different kinds of public. We have used a wide variety of mediation supports - with audio, video, sound, sensory materials - to reach all kind of publics in a intensional inclusive perspective. Also, all the material are hanged and placed at a comfortable eye level for children or disabled visitors. We have included interactive materials to engage the visitors and we have invited all the participants to register their name and height with a pen on a rule, a symbolic way of signaling their presence and leaving their mark on the exhibition.
The mediation strategies and elements used on "Cota 1,20" created other forms of accessibility to museum contents, closer to the children, allowing for different visions and readings. The inter-relationship between Museum, School and Design gave rise to the development of significant projects and learnings considered of quality for all those involved, namely for the children, the educators/teachers, the Museum, the School, the families and the general public.
Although “Cota 1,20” has been exhibited in renowned museums, the entrance has been free for all, as we want to guaranty open access to everyone.
Children, families and adults involved (from the school, the museum and universities) participated during all the phases of the project construction. Since the beginning, everyone had an important contribution, not only in terms of producing materials, but also reflecting and giving their opinion about the way the project should be conducted.
We have had several meetings organized with different groups that got involved in the project. The knowledge and opinions of each one influenced and gave different inputs that were visible in the final product.
Both in Lisbon, at MNAC, and in Porto, at MHNC-UP, the exhibition had a huge number of participants/visitors - children and their families as well as people from different contexts, national and international ones. Without the civil society this project wouldn’t have had sense, as this was a co-constructed project that aimed to create a participated reflection on the approached issues.
“Cota” 1,20 contributed to transforme the role of partners as educational services for citizenship. With this, we have created new and sustained social networks and promoted the cross-fertilization of different discourses (education, arts, design, architecture, sociology, museologists, and others) that allowed an effective operationalization of the educational process of all those involved.
The challenge was made by two teachers from FAUP - Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto, who defied us to explore the street with the children.
In terms of research design methodologies, and in the design project for the exhibition, we have worked with ID+ Instituto de Investigação em Design, Media e Cultura, the research lab from FBAUP - Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, with whom we work with PhD regular partnerships. With this intern Designer from ID+, that is working inside school and whose PHD research is about the improvements Design can bring to mediation between children and museum’s contents, we could think and draw a holistic project, based on inclusive methodologies, benefiting from the Design’s capacity of improving the capacity of communication of the acknowledge of the children’s research. This direct participation of the Design through the process, allowed a more communicative and interactive outcome, valuing the children’s work and opinions.
Porto Vivo SRU was also one of the institutions related with the architecture of that street, that worked with us in this project. The children interviewed them and they gave a very interesting input to them about the street and the historical changes that occurred on it through times, giving them materials, maps and other graphics, that made them better understand the history of urban space.
The Museums - MNAC and MHNC-UP - were important stakeholders that allowed this project to succeed. They trusted and believed on this project, giving us the possibility of exhibiting in a dignified way at their spaces, working with us with solutions and validating the quality of the whole work.
This project had some financial support of APEI - Associação dos Profissionais de Educação de Infância and ID+ on the production of the materials.
We had also had the support of PNA - Plano Nacional das Artes, that helped to spread this project through their net of connections.
“Cota 1,20” was a trans and multi-disciplinary project that involved different knowledge fields, such as Education, Design, Architecture, Geography, Urban Environment and Museology, involving representatives for each field.
With this, children, educators, museums and the other participants have dealt with the most pressing challenges in a global, plural, diverse context, providing professional development opportunities that involved sharing and live observations of good practices. Therefore, new and sustained social networks were created, leading to positive partnerships.
Each contributed in concordance of their expertise, but giving opinion on the other’s contributions, enabling the creation of a hybrid zone, in which each participant knew the role they were assuming, without confusing the limits of each one, but at the same time mutually reinforcing each other. With this, the value of the project was exponentially multiplied, as we have created more value that the one that could exist if the fields worked in a more individualistic way.
Thus, we have promoted children’s confidence in communicating with others that come from different fields or other non-verbal and artistic languages, feeding their capacity of intervening and being active in society and their communities.
Schools face the challenges of urban diversity, being increasingly diverse and pluralistic with many children coming from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds. With this kind of projects, they can become places of reference in creating new synergies with local communities that promote the development of social and civic competences. Opening the school to the community helped children and adults to understand, engage in and be a part of the cultural, artistic and educational practices of urban life, creating an effect on the territory, where everyone gain.
The intervention of school in public spaces, such as Museums - National Museums with great visibility - , was one of the most important goals in this project. The way the exhibition was presented, in equity with the other exhibitions in the museum’s space, was intensional and demanded a high level of quality on its co-construction.
It was relevant the inclusion of the Design inside school, previously and during the whole process. The balance between design and education enabled the creation of a hybrid zone, in which each participant knew the role they were assuming, without confusing the limits of each one, but at the same time mutually reinforcing each other. In this conquest of enlarged spaces of action, Design designs "through poetry (...) solutions that do not dispense with the form as a value in itself, capable of establishing with the other, other supra-functional symbolic relations" (Providência, 2012, p. 153).
The dignification of the children's contribution - whether through drawing or recording, or through formulating opinions - was also one of the main innovative contributions of this proposal. The designer did not override the children's imprint, but acknowledged it, creating more value in it, allowing and boosting a more effective communication of their contribution.
This is an itinerant exhibition, that can be transferred to different museums. All is made in a modular system, that can be easily transported on a regular car. Because of the nature of the exhibition, it can reach diversified audiences, enabling an evaluation and validation in different contexts. We are now connecting with the city-hall of Vila Real, to organize the next stop for the exhibit, that is very different from the Lisbon and Porto scene. We also have a lot of teachers that are interested in seeing how to replicate this kind of project methodology at their schools, as they were amazed with the results we have achieved in different areas. We are organizing different moments of training about this, with a good feedback from the all the people involved.
In that way, the relation with schools, museums and other interesting partners can expand in a more fruitful relationship.
In terms of written dissemination for the scientific area, we were invited to write a chapter about “Cota 1,20” for a book that will be published in Brasil by Vânia de Oliveira, from Faculdade de Ciências Sociais da Universidade Federal de Goiás. This chapter was already submitted to the book editors and waits its publication.
We are preparing an article for the magazine “Arquitetura com y para la infancia”, from PpA-Proyeto, Progreso y Arquitectura from Escola de Arquitectura da Universidade de Sevilha.
The project was shared by invitation of several academic teachers, at Escola de Arquitetura da Universidade do Minho, Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto.
In Italy, we have spread our methodology and final exhibition result at ELA Erasmus Academy, sharing with different people of diverse areas and backgrounds, that can apply this knowledge in their our projects.
On the media, different newspapers wrote about it - Jornal Público and Notícias UP - and TV channel Porto Canal did a report at the Museum, which helped to reach a more diverse and broader public.
We have used collaborative, participatory and co-creation methodologies during the entire process. Also the project methodology was implicit in every step.
“Cota 1,20” was developed in 6 phases: briefing definition, participatory research, production, reflection, co-creation and exhibition/dissemination.
Briefing Definition: the enrollment of the children was provoked by two architects from FAUP - Álvaro Domingues e Ivo Poças Martins - curators of an exhibition at Casa do Infante, Porto, “Mouzinho: da Ribeira ao Aeroporto”. Then, children and adults from the school decided what to do with this teaser.
Participatory Research: Children explored the street, through passive and active methodologies. Interviews, observation, exploring maps and researching on library.
Production: In the street and at school, they made several productions: drawings, written texts and photos.
Reflection: Children and adults shared the produced materials, and reflected on them, on focus groups.
Co-creation: Designer, Children and adults involved co-created the material for the exhibition.
Exhibition/Dissemination: COTA 1,20 was exhibited at MNAC - Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea from July 2022 to September 2022, and at MHNC-UP - Museu de HIstória Natural e da Ciência da Universidade do Porto, from December 2022 to February 2023.
This project, although it is focused on a local subject, is very relevant to a broader public and it’s able to have a big impact on global territory.
The competences we have developed are the basis of European citizenship and that are increasingly recognized as the fundamental foundations for developing an atitude of lifelong learning (European Reference Framework, 2006). This kind of projects that promote autonomy, discovery, imagination and thinking about the global consequences of our individual actions, challenge the domesticity and insularity of cultural practices, while favoring new connections with different classes, genders, spaces, cultures and ethnicities, in a cosmopolitan logic of those who are comfortable in a diverse, respectful and sustainable approach to our planet.
With Cota 1,20 we want to build innovative, non-standardized actions, that can let us grow out of our individual world, making the difference in the communities it reaches with a new view to the future.
The new dimension of this close collaborations, sustained between educational, academic, and cultural partners allowed expanding the sense of belonging and also the understanding of the importance of a respectful relation with nature, confronting the localfrom a local level to a global one, enabling the grow of the creative and innovative potencial of the various actors in this area.
Our underlining principle was that the Arts and Design can act not only as a mediator device of the local educational process, but also as a cross cultural tool, considering them a simultaneously idiosyncratic and universal language that contributes to the construction of a cultural identity at European level.
As explained in the previous points, we have exhibited “Cota 1,20” at two Nacional Museums: MNAC - Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, in Chiado, Lisbon, and in MHNC-UP Museu de História Natural e da Ciência da Universidade do Porto. Now, we are preparing its next stop at Vila Real, in the north of Portugal, in a very different urban context.
We have been regularly working on the dissemination of this project, through articles, book chapters, webinars, conferences, in different scientific fields.
The schools that had contact with this experience, by the media or other ways, have interest in, in some way, replicate this methodologies at their places, using other and different contexts.
The success of this action was recognized by Portugal Entre Patrimónios; PNA Plano Nacional das Artes; APEI - Associação dos Profissionais de Educação de Infância; EPA - Educação para a Arquitetura, Agência Erasmus; Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto; ID+ Instituto de Investigação em Design, Media e Cultura; Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto; among other institutions that demonstrated their interest and valued the nature and innovative character of the project, that allowed to construct a cross fertilization with all of them. Some of this institutions were already connected in some way to OSMOPE, others connected with us because they were inspired by this project.
At this moment, it would be important to collect all the steps, conclusions and reflections about this project in a book that could be spread and disseminated in a broader way. Winning this prize would allow us to have financial support for this production and edition, as we are a non-profit organization school.
Children were cultural interlocutors, presenting, with this project and exhibition, what they have learned about sustainability and the need for a green transition. They created mental maps, they visited the city, exploring the surrounding space through visits and discovered new and old paths that influence the way nature reacts to human action.
They learned and understood how to reflect in a large group that also included other children and adults from diverse areas. They jointly planned dissemination actions with their large community and with the support of all the partners.
“Cota 1,20” enabled early childhood educators/teachers to deal with the most pressing challenges in our global, plural and diverse context, providing profissional development opportunities that involved sharing and live observations of good practices that oriented us to the new path of a greener society.
Arts and Design, more than mediator devices, could be an important part of a bigger educational process that cross fertilizes different areas in a global world that need local solutions and good practices having in mind a more sustainable and respectful connection with everyone.
This project provoked on educators the need to have access to new ways of understanding the educational action, which would inspire and encourage them to develop new pedagogical processes in a context of sharing and collaboration. “Cota 1,20” made it possible through the creation of partnerships that promoted continuous exchanges of knowledge between different organizations of city life, that added new and valid inputs to innovate educative practice.
VIDEOS:
Field research: https://vimeo.com/795213243
Cota 1,20 Porto Exhibition: https://vimeo.com/795213243
