Felt dust and forests

I didn’t manage to blog yesterday as it was a really long day. Fantastic but packed full.

Morning we went searching for felt for the workshops. Visited Gentil Carioca, an independent gallery where Silvia showed her first set of work with EME. A lovely gallery, we went behind the scenes to see the amazing toilet that is an artwork and had a quick expresso with Incio who works there.

Got the bus to the botanical gardens to meet Bruno and popped into the school so I got an idea about what it was like. So many conversations about British / Brazilian education our experiences with the schools exchange.

Silvia took me on a walk through the botanical gardens showing me the places they took the children and what they did. Stopped for a drink at the cafe to wait for Bruno - my first Pao de Queijo of the trip (bread cheese) and Gaurana.

Had an amazing couple of hours with Bruno and Silvia at the stunning Parque Largo (the art school below the hill with christ on the top). Talked about science, astronomy, he showed us the amazing work he has been doing since last year building a botanical sculpture to regenerate the land (which was once Mata Atlantica) as a kind of surreal second nature.

Today was a 5.30am start to get to the school for 7am. Here the children have morning school or afternoon school and 40 children in a class. We worked with 80 children in 5 hours but in the most peaceful stress free way. Groups of 6-8 children came to our mobile studio in the van and on stools made by Silvia outside in the playground. We introduced the project to the groups we hadn’t worked with before and showed the work from Djanogly to the group who Silvia had worked with earlier in the year.

We did the human sensor activity with the children also using the sensor kits to compare their perception of the forest with the science.

Returned home to cut felt. Felt dust in my mouth. Beautiful circles of coloured felt and symbols to build the visualisation from the human data collected by the children to create a picture of their experience of the forest on the edge of their school.

Didn’t see any monkeys though.