This Monday, December 14th, the III Congress of Projects to Support the Permanence of Undergraduate Students (PAPE-G) began. Organized by the Student Support Service (SAE), a body of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies (PRG) at Unicamp, the event also celebrates 10 years of the Student-Artist Program, which aims to encourage and promote artistic projects and cultural aspects of students.
The III PAPE-G Congress aims to disseminate and encourage reflection, improvement and construction of knowledge around projects linked to social grants. At Unicamp, the scholarship program, distributed according to socioeconomic and academic criteria, is one of the pillars of the student retention program. In addition to financial support, various types of scholarships enable engagement in complementary academic training activities.
During the Congress, students awarded scholarships linked to academic projects have the opportunity to present work arising from research, cultural and extension activities. In the third edition, which takes place on December 14th and 15th, 151 works will be presented.
Program completes 10 years
The Student-Artist Program was created in 2010. Conceived by the dean and pro-rector of Undergraduate Studies at the time, professors Fernando Costa and Marcelo Knobel, the Program has since included 145 projects. Through Student-Artist, students receive grants to mount their cultural and artistic productions, which are presented on the University's campuses. In 2019, through partnership with Sesc-Campinas, also occurred in the entity’s space.
To celebrate this history, the opening table of the Congress was made up of representations from Unicamp and linked to the history of the Student-Artist Program. The current person responsible for the Program and SAE's cultural advisor, professor Maria Cláudia Guimarães, highlighted that in these years, the Student-Artist, in addition to contemplating student scholarships, provided a large circulation of art in the campus spaces. Furthermore, he pointed out, the preparation to help students develop their creations also involved training stages, with workshops, debates and important workshops for the training of artists.
A survey carried out among 103 students and former students who have already been covered by the Student-Artist was highlighted by the teacher. The testimonies collected, said Maria Cláudia, signal the importance of the Program for professional experience. “By doing the questionnaire with the students, we see in their answers how important it was to their lives and how this experience adds up.”
In 2020, due to the pandemic, there was a need to adapt the Program to a virtual format. The dean of Unicamp, professor Marcelo Knobel, highlighted the challenges regarding this process at the table. “Our challenge now, the next step within this Student-Artist Program, is to make the content viral so that the actions, demonstrations and artistic production resulting from the program reach a large audience”. The rector also highlighted other artistic actions carried out during 2020, such as the magazine "Arte para Desconfinar", an initiative by Dean of Extension and Culture (Proec).
Also a member of the panel, the director of the Institute of Arts (IA), Paulo Ronqui, pointed out that maintaining the Student-Artist Program, even in a virtual format, was important to continue promoting art, an area that was hit hard by the pandemic. “The fundamental role of this program is the continuity in promoting and disseminating the projects included in these 10 years”, he assessed.
Professor Leandro Medrano, who was the SAE coordinator when the Program was created, recalled the premises that governed the creation of the project. They are: democratizing forms of cultural and artistic expression, covering different formats; democratize access to cultural policies, involving the university community in the discussion of the creation of the Program; having transparency means publicizing methods and forms; promote learning in pre-production, production and post-production; reveal new talents and improve the quality of life on campuses.
Hideki Yoshimoto, manager of Sesc, highlighted the importance of art and science and celebrated the partnership that, in 2019, led to seven shows of Student-Artist projects being presented at Sesc. “Making art and relating to art is something everyone does and should be encouraged in a systematic and constant way. It cannot be something occasional, but something that is part of people's training. It is a pleasure for SESC to be involved with this program.”
Student-Artist integrates a strengthened permanence policy
The dean of Undergraduate Studies, Eliana Amaral, and the SAE coordinator, Helena Altmann, also made up the opening panel and highlighted that the Student-Artist Program is one of the axes of a robust permanence policy that inspires other ideas. Unicamp, said the dean, already has 50% of its students coming from a socioeconomic reality that requires some type of support, and it is necessary to strengthen this policy.
The permanence program at Unicamp, highlighted Eliana, is quite vast, and the issue of student permanence permeates the scholarship initiative, of which the University has sought to expand the modalities. "We must try to expand the possibilities of scholarships. The importance of this is not only in financial support, although it is essential, but there is the development of skills and abilities that are necessary in the training of these students”, she stated.
For the SAE coordinator, celebrating 10 years of the Student-Artist highlights the maturity and continuity of a policy consolidated by Unicamp's permanence policy, which has been seeking to improve itself each year to guarantee the training of students. "In recent years, Unicamp has not only increased the number of scholarships and students covered, but has also invested in qualifying the permanence program and adapting it to admission policies. The PAPE-G Congress is part of this process with the aim of giving visibility and academic recognition for the work of scholarship students”.
All projects included in 2020 by the Student-Artist Program, as well as the 151 works registered in the Congress, can be accessed. Find out more on the SAE page: www.sae.unicamp.br
