Todos Pró Bairro

This project departs from the notion of neighborhood community and proximity and the potential to use public space as a stage for open public discussion, sharing and co-creation. Its aim was to promote the self-organization of a community in identifying its spatial everyday problems and needs, as well as possible solutions.

Understanding this project as a starting point for future community developments, we worked with the tools, skills and wills people had with them.

Stemming from this, the three week activity was divided into three different bur interlocking moments of listening and creating, that we called “Listening,” “Clarifying,” “Mobilizing.”

LISTENING

In the first listening phase we developed dialogues with various people from the neighborhood, collecting personal histories and collective stories about it. Several meetings with different people and associations were organized, including with local representatives.

CLARIFIYNG

In this second moment we opened the listening process for the discussion and sharing of ideas concerning the neighborhood’s public space, namely through the use of a critical map (Mapa de Ideias Pró Bairro) a survey of local skills and knowledge (Círculo de Saberes) and an open canvas for ideas.

Working from the ideas of material reuse and circular economy, most materials for the interventions to come were recovered from leftovers from local companies and municipal warehouses, while others were brought by people from the neighborhood

MOBILIZING

The collective creation of public interventions. A plan of action was elaborated with dwellers and it combined areas of interest and skills, with needs and suggestions, as well as the desire to gather a collective around new uses of the neighborhood’s space.