August 2023

Now I’m back in the UK, I am beginning to reflect on the extraordinary Pop Rua (population of the street) Festival in São Paulo co-ordinated by Renata Motta, Monica Machado, Claudia Toni, Ana Louisa Sirota de Azevedo and many others at Sesc São Paulo and Museu da Lingua Portuguesa.

There are an estimated 54,000 people living on the streets of São Paulo. This number is growing. If you stopped to think about this, it would be easy to do nothing. Instead, the Museum and SESC took action and created the biggest arts and homelessness festival in history and a legacy that will build opportunities for homeless people in the future.

First the numbers – 2 days of street festival outside the museum; 4,000 free lunches served to homeless people; at least 10,000 visitors; a further training day delivered by AHI with 200 cultural and social workers; 2 main stages with music, dance, the Uma só Voz choir from Rio (I hadn’t seen them since 2016 which I helped set up the choir as part of Rio 2016) ; street performers; 10 tents for support services from dog grooming to doctors; numerous craft stalls; a dozen debates with an international delegation from Latin America, UK and France.

AHI also launched our Latin American ‘Hub’ (a network for the arts and homelessness sector in the region) with some of the assembled orgs – Uma só Voz, Boca da Rua, Cisarte and many projects from Brazil together with No Tan Distintes and Hecho en BA in Argentina, Idartes from Colombia and Urbano from Uruguay. The network will meet online 4 times a year and support and strengthen the sector while celebrating the creativity of homeless people.

The festival was on a scale never seen before where the cultural sector and homeless sector came together. My first reflection is that scale does matter – not everything needs to be big but having run festivals at 2 Olympics, a big splash definitely creates more ripples – the visibility, narrative status and legacy all impact positively for arts and social change. Few people are ambitious about what homeless people can achieve (including and sometimes especially the professionals who work in the field). Ambitious projects show that achievement and that change IS possible. It’s lifts everyone up.

Secondly, the project was a success because of partnerships – the cultural orgs made deep partnerships over a year with all the main homeless movements esp the homeless-led ones inc Movement População de Rua. This gave authenticity and integrity.

The level of co-creation was excellent with homeless people on stage all the time and being paid for their work.

The festival culminated on 19th Aug at Praça da Se, the site of a mass murder of homeless people in 2003. The anniversary is marked by speeches and commitments for justice. This year, there was a launch of a Latin American day of the ‘struggles’ of homeless people. We met the Secretary of State for Social Services who took us round a new Housing First Village for homeless families with children. I love the idea behind HF but in practice, too many people suffer from loneliness and boredom when transitioning into accommodation. This village had activities and workshops and a sense of community. It was more holistic and the results of people moving onto their own accommodation and jobs speaks for itself.

We are indebted to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation UK and Stavros Niarchos Foundation for funding our work in the Global Majority.

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