Art and Citizenship Laboratory (LAC)

The project proposes the development of spaces for artistic creation and civic participation aimed at young people that live in compliance with the measures of law, educational mentoring, and prison protection. We especially address youngsters that demonstrate failure profiles and school dropout, by promoting the activation of social and personal skills for their inclusion and employability.

The main objective is to certify young people through participation in artistic workshops (theater, music, fine arts...) and through attending different thematic seminars, in an innovative methodological approach, developed in partnership with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto.

Entering a Prison Facility is confronting ourselves with the multiple possibilities of the decisions we make. It is to dethrone Certainty from its dogma pedestal. It is incessantly reflecting and creating acts of survival.

Over the course of a year, PELE shared, with 16 other individuals, a white room, partially covered with tiles, a singular window facing an internal courtyard, a heavy door with a small frosted glass; and two meticulously directed surveillance cameras. There, we carried white papers, markers and paints, clay, music, and so many other materials that, in its most poetic desire, could propose other forms of dialogue, expression, decision and imagination.

We wander through bodily experiences and collective reflections, inspired by the sounds of a playlist on demand and by the continuous sharing of the group's concerns and desires. We were creating a community. Block 1. Block 2. Block 3. A collective body, materialized by the confluence of so many differences.

Each one guided by their opportunities, each one different from the other. Or maybe the same. Each one taking their time, so that, in those small symbolic windows of freedom, they could print their revolutions.

Waking up was matutinal. A brief look at a landscape where the horizon line runs out in a fleeting moment. Each negotiated step, on a path that took them from the slow passage of time, to another place. Perhaps one of experiencing the thresholds of mistrust, or perhaps a ritual of liberation.

We look today at these individuals of immense courage, with the distance already of missing. We look at their decisions written on paper, their real and utopian worlds in the modulated clay, their words deposited in letters, the denial of their dehumanization thrown into their articulated bodies.

From that place of continuous confinement, we see the perseverance of 16 individuals to reject the severity of their routine, and that create a place of regeneration - political, civic, individual and collective.

LAC Coordination: Maria João Mota
Facilitation Workshops: Fernando Almeida and João Paulo Lima, Pedro Santos, Ricardinho Lopes
Socio-educational Mediation / Education Science Technician: Mafalda Guedes and Tiago Araújo
Mentorship: Abel Sousa, Christian Georgescu, Amin Danso
Exhibition curation: Fernando Almeida and Ruca Bourbon
Video Record: João Miguel Ferreira
Photographic record: Paulo Pimenta
Graphic Design: Sérgio Couto
Audio recording: Miguel Azevedo, Rui Pedro Martelo

Partners: Direcção Geral da Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais; Faculdade de Psicologia e Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto; Saber Compreender
Financing: Programa Cidadãos Ativ@s - EEA Grants (Islândia, Liechtenstein e Noruega) gerido em Portugal pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian em parceria com a Fundação Bissaya Barreto;