Português
As I write this article there is going on another forum theater session, at the facilities of the Spin Association, at the Bairro Padre Cruz. While some continue to practice, the others, who wait for their turn, prepare the party that will be there tomorrow night.
This is what’s happening these days. The working groups were arranged with people from the three different projects that are taking part in the internship. And like that we keep on working. Some in one activity, others in the other, simultaneously and looking in the same direction: what we have in common, what we know, what we can learn, with each other, from each other.
Luís Pacheco, a writer who made a text called “Comunidade” talks about family and sharing like a raft. It is a beautiful literary image, the raft one. Here, some are family, others are not. Some are friends, others are not. But it’s a metaphor that we can use without reservation. The one of the raft that we all build together and that with the dedication that we put, it will arrive at good port.
Yesterday was intense.
Like I said, three groups were formed, mixing participants from all projects. The way we organize daily activities makes everyone busy at the same time.
They all have one thing in common: the Other. The way we relate, how we behave together, how we care about who’s on the other side.
Simultaneously there are the theatre forum workshop with Judite; the upcycling workshop with Cris; and the sustainable food workshop with Maria João. All the things that are worked out in these three workshops have the primordial axis based on one thing: the concern with the other, with sharing and the future. To identify present problems, act in a way to work on these problems.
Forum Theater
Sustainable Food
Upcycling Workshop
This transports directly to how we ended the day. An incubator of action, where we returned to work with the groups of each neighbourhood. There, we think about the specific problems of where each one lives and we discuss similarities and differences between the different places and contexts from where each participant group came.
In the middle we had a visit. Jorge Pina (whoever does not know his life history, try to get to know, if you may) came to tell us about the dreams and the will to do what we wants. Of the possibility of doing what we want, if we put our head and heart into it the right place and have the strength to carry that weight on our shoulders.
And there was, as it could not miss, a street football practice. All this comes together, and as the ANFR so well wrote to us,, it is at the center of all that we work for.
The day continues.
Tomorrow I’ll write back.
Until then.
Outros Campeonatos is a project by Academia Cidadã, that aims to promote active citizenship in Quinta do Cabrinha, Alcântara.
Funded by BIP/ZIP from the Municipality of Lisbon with the partnership of District Hall of Alcântara, the youth group “Winds of Change”, the National Association of Street Football and the Lisbon Sustainable Tourism.
Outros Campeonatos will contribute for the social fortification of the neighborhood, promoting community organization, capacity for local initiative and greater democratic awareness. It will also promote an opening of the neighborhood to society in general, reinforcing its integrity in the city. The main strategies of action will be street football and tourism. Street football events draw the inhabitants of the neighborhood to intervene and participate in its organization and implementation – with facilitation of tools and processes of organized citizen participation. Tourism helps rethinking the neighborhood, opening the community to new citizenship experiences.