A Cidade percebida pelas crianças a partir de vivências artísticas

Abstract

The growing urbanization process places cities at the center of the challenges of the 21st century, since they interfere in spatial-demographic ordering, permeate socio-environmental dynamics and influence psychosocial identity references. Cities are at the center of contemporary discussions. This situation has a direct impact on the way population lives with the city. In turn, the look on the city focuses attention on the people who make up the same, among which are the children. Today, children are not only in the cities as they are an integral part of them, experiencing their innumerable configurations, such as art. It is possible, therefore, to anchor the relation of the children with the city of Manaus through the experiences of the children in an art school: Liceu de Artes e Ofícios Claudio Santoro. The present study aimed to understand the process of perception of the city environment among children from their artistic experiences in an arts school. This investigative process built a methodological course, where its nature proved to be qualitative and its materialization was through a field research with the multi-methods approach. A total of 77 children participated in different techniques, such as mental map, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and artistic atelier. The study showed that the children's perceptions of the city indicate a non-static relation, but always open the variables that can come from a "layered" context in the children's subjectivities. As a result, it can be pointed out that the socialization of children with the city is a dialectical process, that is, there is a confluence of interactions that are formed through the interpositions of the adult, with respect to the use of city spaces, and the ways as children reelaborate their "being" in each space from their experiences. Such re-elaborations occur through the intermediary of continual aspects that either add a perception or through perceptions that disaggregate or remove elements that were once present. Hence, the experience of art is an important instrument for expressing the relation of children to the city. Children experiencing art through continuous contact with the socio-environmental dynamics of the city reverberate a language of understanding of the world, signaling through their experiences their being in the world. Finally, the study signals the recognition of children in the city. They circulate, visit, perceive, and build the city as they experience it.