of contributing to lasting and meaningful experiences, committed to understanding the different paths, their present relations and their future prospects. And if capable of putting all this into practice based on the meanings that cultural reality makes for those who live it through a poetic experience that “assumes basic human, lived or intuited, delicate and violent, singular and universal experiences that they incorporate into life and silently transform themselves into those who live them” (WISNIK, 2005). The big challenge is how to carry out cultural management based on this sensitivity, without falling into a management that only offers activities, services and goods, since, to be effective, it has to provide experiences to individuals. Therefore, we started from four points: the place, the team, the public and the institutional principles.
88
THE PLACE A land fenced with railings, a large square at the apex of Mercúrio and Estado avenues, in the center of São Paulo’s cereal zone, between two great historical icons of the city: the Palácio das Indústrias, today Catavento Museum, and the São Paulo Municipal Market Paulo, in Cantareira street. Sesc Parque Dom Pedro II emerged as a “temporary place”, a place where people could meet to get shelter, protection or even a break, however brief they were. As the geographer Edward Relph (1979) considers, places only acquire identity and meaning through human intentions and the relation between them and their objective attributes, that is, the physical setting and the activities developed there. The Temporary Units, as well as the Definitive ones, are multidisciplinary spaces that combine leisure, cultural activities and sociability, and thus enable the building of a more intimate relationship between individuals and the place. This temporary place, marked by transience, activates a social network that inserts Sesc as a
meeting point in a context of actions that contribute to spreading and democratizing public access to cultural goods.
THE AUDIENCE Sesc Parque Dom Pedro II was open from 10 am to 6 pm, from Wednesdays to Sundays, including holidays. These days and times were designed to meet the flow of the surroundings, with students, tourists, workers, immigrants, refugees and residents. Priority and subsidized service is aimed at workers in commerce, services and tourism, including their family members, but impacts the entire population, all those who attend the unit and follow its schedule, providing a general benefit for the community. Homeless people also enjoy our spaces and our schedules. We were careful to welcome them as they came to us, without any distinction. The rules of coexistence are the same for everyone who use the space.
THE TEAM Managed by Sesc Carmo, Sesc Parque Dom Pedro II space has a multidisciplinary team of approximately 30 employees in Activity Programming, Communication, Food, Infrastructure and Services, committed to our institutional mission.¹1 The team was made up of employees from Sesc Carmo and other units staff, as well as new hires. This mix generates exchanges of experiences, and orality is a fundamental aspect in this process. Still under construction, the space required that the team, in addition to attributes specific to the nature of the positions and functions, had sensitivity and openness to new perspectives and to build 1
“Promoting socio-educational actions that contribute to the social well-being and quality of life of workers in the trade in goods, services and tourism, their families and the community, for a fair and democratic society.” (Available at Sesc portal https:// www.sesc.com.br/portal/ sesc/ o_sesc/Missao/)
new paths aimed at improving the services already provided. So, Sesc considers education as a prerequisite for social transformation, and this concept is fundamental in the management and qualification of teams. Employees act as educators, regardless of their background or position.
INSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES Sesc develops a non-formal and permanent education to value its different audiences, by encouraging personal autonomy, interaction and contact with different expressions and ways of thinking, acting and feeling. To carry out the programming of spaces, Sesc is guided by an understanding of expanded, anthropological culture in which values, habits and aspects related to behaviors, beliefs, conducts, political forces, reflective awareness and group identity are present, that is, aspects that go beyond the sphere of artistic languages (MIRANDA, 2018). Sesc Parque Dom Pedro II offers free access to cultural, leisure and sports practices, gathered in Sesc’s various lines of action, linked to arts, sports, food, health, education for sustainability and diversity, plus social tourism. Access enables people’s well-being and a sense of belonging. It is linked to the possibility of each individual participating in human relationships and interactions, giving them the dignity of being an actor in this chain. Without the right to participate in cultural life, people are unable to develop social and cultural bonds that are important for maintaining satisfactory conditions of equality. When people are excluded from cultural life, this can have consequences for the well-being and even for the sustainability of the social order. Participation is closely related to the ability of citizens to create a sense of responsibility in areas such as respect for others, non-discrimination, equality,
social justice, preservation of diversity and heritage and with regard to another culture (LAAKSONEN, 2011, p .49). Sesc has a fundamental role in the cultural formation of individuals, based on the principle of democratization of culture to overcome inequalities in access to culture for the majority of the population. The idea of cultural democratization fosters the concept of everyone’s right to actively participate in cultural life, emphasizing the importance of this participation as users and creators. One of the ways to contribute to the effective participation in cultural life is through the experience lived by individuals. Incorporating this type of experience in the formation of individuals is probably the most effective step to disseminate these languages and their codes, in such a way that they bring about a real change in people’s relationship with culture, art and leisure. Here is the chance to change the pattern of relationship with the various artistic expressions and sociability, allowing one to move from a mere enjoyment of entertainment to a practice in which it unfolds into a personal development process. Another important factor is informal education in changing people’s relationship with cultural activities, as it is possible at any stage of individuals’ lives, as well as because of its complementary and continuous nature. This is the sphere with the greatest possibility of intervention, and may reach a purposeful action in the sense of forming audiences and expanding the possibilities of the cultural life of individuals. Informal education as a strategy to change the relationship between the individual and culture, in its articulation with leisure, has been shown to be an effective way of bringing audiences closer to certain contents. The French sociologist Joffre Dumazedier (1999) already reported the successful experiences resulting from the association between informal education and the transmission of content via leisure and recreational activities.
89
