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‘Rethinking Museum, Rede�ning Value: Projecto Ecomuseu’ |Campos de São José, BrasilOctober 16, 2017 |   by Vivien Ahrens   

What is an Ecomuseum?   

Vivien Ahrens, cultural anthropologist and educator from Munich, Germany, explored this questionduring her Master’s program research in Museology and Social Sciences at the Universidade de SãoPaulo in 2015/16.  “I am fascinated by current debates and projects within New Museology, amovement seeking to broaden the discourse and practice of museums, emphasizing their potentialfor social change.”  Vivien shares here some of her experiences with the Ecomuseum of Campos deSāo José.  

My eyes follow a beam of morning sun light falling through laced curtains onto the living room table. Here, a cell

phone lies, ready to record the conversation of us eight: four women, a man, two boys and me. A small digital

camera faces Nilcéia, the eldest of the women. She sits upright, her hands folded, resting on the table top.

Intently, she looks into the faces of the others. Renata, the youngest of the women begins to speak:

Have you heard of the city park? In that park there is a museum, the Museum of Folklore. The objects in the museum

are valuable, right? (…) Now, the idea of the Ecomuseum is as if the whole area, the whole Campos de São José were a

museum and everything inside it is important, like these objects. Just that they don‘t have to be objects any more. It can

be people, their memories and stories, the school, the Park Alambarí, the creek, the square… everything that people

consider their heritage. The goal is to value the heritage of the neighborhood. And I mean handcrafts, cooking, the cake

you learned from your grandma, farming. What‘s important for the person in their life, you see? And from there we can

make things happen in the neighborhood, starting from what is valuable.

Hesitantly at �rst, Nilcéia tells her story. She describes how, when she was only 16 years old, she and her

husband moved from the Northeastern state of Piauí to Campos de São José. How they constructed their house

on the end of the road, when there were still no neighbors, no paved streets, no water system, no bus lines. As

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Vivien Ahrens, 'Nilcéai's hands resting on the table topduring interview', drawing.

'Feira dos Saberes e Fazeres', Ecomuseu, Campos de San José

we listen, Nilcéia seems to rediscover her own memories,

correcting herself, giggling at the details that emerge. As

the people and places of her tale grow more recent, her

listeners join in, adding anecdotes and jokes. Nadir,

Nilceai’s neighbor, will later carefully transcribe the

interview, entering places and memories to a register of

residents’ statements – the archives of the Ecomuseu

Campos de São José.

Inventory? Archive? For whom, by whom? Why speak of

museum, heritage and value in Nilceia’s living room?

The Projeto Ecomuseum Campos de São José is based

on a broadened understanding of museum. An entire

neighborhood and “everything that is seen as valuable“ is

considered heritage, and forms the museum’s archive.

The project’s goal is “to foster civic engagement through

valuing local skills and knowledge“ - a value not de�ned

by a stereotypical museum’s monumental building,

exhibition cases or ancient objects, but

created through participatory activities.

In 2015, Angela Savastano, the director of

the Museu do Folclore, decided to take

this idea out from the city center into the

neighborhood of Campos de São José. An

hour by bus from the Museu do Folclore,

the neighborhood lies remote of the

center’s infrastructure and cultural

institutions. The district has been

populated since the early 1990s, chie�y by

immigrants from the Northeast, who like

Nilceia’s family, came in search of better

economic opportunities.

Today the residents, largely factory and domestic employees, commute between their workplaces in the center

and their homes in “Campos”, spending a good part of their day in full public buses. Many of the youths growing

up in the neighborhood, complain that “there is nothing here”. Still, they identify with “Campos”, and resist

against the district being called a “favela” by center dwellers, or being discriminated against because of their

Vivien Ahrens, 'View over Campos de São José', drawing.

Vivien Ahrens, 'Mamona (castor bean) seedling withproject logo in the community garden', drawing.

Northeastern descent. The seniors wish

for more contact and interaction with

neighbors, who “often don’t even know the

name of the family next door”.

Dona Angela, already in contact with

residents through other projects, set o�

on her mission  of creating an

Ecomuseum. She secured funding and

started a small project team of three –

 director Maria Siqueria, co-worker Renata

Sparapan and intern Carol Farnesi.

Speaking to neighbors about the idea of

the Ecomuseum, they started up regular

meetings and activities.

Today, the Ecomuseum unites a group of about 25

residents, mostly senior citizens and school students.

During weekly meetings, the “Rodas de Conversa”, every

week in a di�erent neighbor’s home, they develop, discuss

and coordinate the project’s activities. Next to the

“Inventário Participativo” described above, the Projeto

Ecomuseu Campos de São José organizes the “Feira dos

Saberes e Fazeres”, a fair in the neighborhood park, where

arts, crafts, music, food and other skills and knowledge are

exhibited. The participants tend to a community garden, a

space between the houses, where patches of passion fruit,

cauli�ower, okra, daisies, tomatoes, zucchini, sweet

potatoes and bananas grow, identi�ed by signs with the

Ecomuseum’s logo. They organize workshops about a

variety of topics, from Northeastern stew recipes, crochet,

to building musical instruments from recycled materials. All

these activities are portrayed by the participants in the

monthly “Campos em Papel”, a neighborhood newspaper,

and the project’s online

blog http://ecomuseusjc.blogspot.com/

What a museum’s task and relevance are, has become a strongly disputed question. Museums are being thought

beyond their traditional core functions of collecting, conserving, researching and interpreting, as a “social factor”

and a platform for participation, political activism, or resource for community development.

Vivien Ahrens, 'Project participant Sena during Roda de Conversa',drawing.

In Brazil, these discussions gain a speci�c

relevance, as they are being assumed by

so-called peripheral neighborhoods,

inventing their own museums, for

example the 'Museu da Mare' or 'Museu

da Favela', in Rio de Janeiro. Here, the

concepts of museum and heritage o�er a

platform for the display of local histories

and self-de�nitions against the

background of social inequality and

stigma. Also, through self-branding as

alternative tourist destinations, wider

public attention and new sources of

revenue can be gained.

In the Ecomuseu Campos de São José on the other hand, it was not public attention that primarily motivated the

members. During the period of my stay, the participants described their experiences with the project very

di�erently. Many of the seniors saw the Ecomuseum as an opportunity to "get out of the house“ and "�nally get to

know the neighbors“. Others described a more general positive sensation, "I like it, because it makes me feel good. I

like how people treat me here“.

Many participants described a changed perceptions of

the neighbourhood, "I always thought there was nothing

here. Now I know there is a lot“. Or more speci�cally, "I

began to see things di�erently. For example, how a

person can do something interesting, "Those kind of things

you always pass on the street, that you didn‘t notice before”.

 Many described a "rediscovering“ of the neighborhood,

and of themselves and their talents, "I didn‘t know what I

could do. I thought I didn’t know anything“.

How do the qualities of a museum interact with these

experiences? An inventory includes a process of selection

and re-contextualization, and thus can be seen as a way

to see, organize and give meaning to our surroundings.

Certain elements are selected, reorganized, institutionally

legitimized and socially recognized through display.

Through this process of “musealization”, thus, symbolic

value is created. As a process of recontextualization and

re-de�nition, a museum o�ers a special frame of

Vivien Ahrens, 'Seu Adão displaying his paintings at theFeira de Saberes e Fazeres', drawing.

Ecomuseu participants during a 'Roda de Conversa' meeting.

© 2018 Emergent Art SpaceAll works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License

perception, which does not necessarily require a building,

but can function through a speci�c framing of any every

day context.

As “a special frame of perception”, created

and manifested within interactions, a

museum o�ers a way of representing the

importance of action to oneself and

others. It becomes an imaginary

monument, a non-material frame,

through which value and meaning can be

reconstructed and rede�ned. By

becoming part of a museum, neighbors

such as Nilceia, have the chance to retell

and give new meaning to their own life

stories.

 

 

 

To learn more about the Projeto Ecomuseu Campos de São José visit http://ecomuseusjc.blogspot.com/

To read about Vivien Ahrens' thesis bibliography and sources, click here.

 

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