Still under the effects of long periods of social isolation caused by the pandemic, the 23rd Reading Congress (Cole) will open next Tuesday (7) at the Faculty of Education (FE) at Unicamp, with all directions facing the street .
Considered one of the most traditional events of its kind in Brazil, Cole bets that reading takes place in multiple places and, because of this, it has opened up to see and hear literature, poetry, music and sociocultural actions that take place on the asphalt, at traffic lights, on the curb, on the sidewalks of Brazilian cities.
See the full schedule here - (https://23colecongressodelei1.eventize.com.br/)
One of the organizers of the Congress, professor at the Faculty of Education Carlos Miranda, says that the topic arose at the beginning of 2022, a period in which there was still a lot of uncertainty about the evolution of the pandemic, but with an optimistic prognosis that isolation measures would be relaxed and face-to-face activities resumed gradually and consistently.
“From there came the idea of how important walking on the streets, personal contact, hand-to-hand contact is for our mental health, and how much this can also be incorporated into the act of reading,” said the professor.
“Normally we imagine that a reader is that isolated figure in his room, in his office, in a room. But reading is opening yourself up to the world”, he teaches.
“There is other literature, other readings taking place outside the offices, the closed environments of the room”, he believes.
For this reason, he says, the organizers thought of bringing specialists to this congress who worked with community actions linked to reading, for example, with poetry at traffic lights and street theater.
“We discovered that reading is not a solitary act. And it was this combination that gave us the idea,” she revealed.
And, in fact, the organizers discovered groups that work with literature and reading on the street. According to Miranda, there are many experiences in this sense in development, in almost all regions of the country.
Table 13, for example, scheduled for February 8th, will discuss the relationship between theater and the street, showing research and experiences from the perspective of performing artists who work, observe, study and reflect on the open space of cities.
Entitled “I hate explaining slang”, Table 11 brings experts to discuss the supposed confrontation between classical literary production and literary productions considered marginal and peripheral.
Table 5, in turn, will debate the impacts of a traveling library and literature program in schools — a successful experience of resistance and encouragement to reading in the semi-arid region of Rio Grande do Norte.
There is also a debate table on the relationship between reading, smartphones and street culture, particularly rap, all of which is part of the discussion of reading practices supported by new technologies and students' musical references.
At another table, the practice of spoken poetry, called “wandering poetics”, will be discussed.
There are also debates about the 2019 civil demonstrations on the streets of Santiago de Chile and a discussion about indigenous literature — the metamorphoses between forest and city.
The broadcasts will be online in classrooms located at FE, where students, researchers and teachers will be able to follow the exhibitions at each table and interact with questions.
The collective sessions will be carried out using educational robots, equipment used in the return to face-to-face activities at Unicamp during the pandemic and which allows you to follow the dynamics of a videoconference with great efficiency.
The Congress
The Brazilian Reading Congress brings together researchers, educators, students, writers and reading promoters from all over Brazil. An event of a scientific, pedagogical and artistic nature, it is held every two years, normally in July.
This year, however, it was brought forward to February due to difficulties faced by the organizers with funding agencies — in this case, the PAEP (Support Program for Events in the Country), a program run by Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel ) and the CNPQ (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), both federal government bodies.
According to professor Carlos Miranda, there were delays in the notices and in setting deadlines.
“This caused a disorganization of schedules, and several entities must have suffered this. Finally, the maximum deadline they gave us to make Cole was February, which is bad, because our target audience starts working in July”, said Miranda.
The problems, however, ended up contributing to a broader format. According to the professor, the Congress managed to bring together groups and initiatives from all regions of the country, which could have been difficult in an exclusively in-person format.
Miranda says he is optimistic about the 23rd Cole.
“Our expectations are high, because everything will be recorded and made available shortly afterwards on YouTube, which will guarantee a good dissemination of the work. Our expectation is that we will have a great production of quality content with our tables”, he stated.
Public policies
Professor Carlos Miranda celebrated the re-creation of the Ministry of Culture — rehabilitated in the government that took office in January — and the creation of the Book and Reading Training secretariat.
The Secretariat will have two directorates: Artistic Education and Training and Book, Reading, Literature and Libraries. “We are resuming public cultural policies,” he stated.
