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Arts & Communication Performance arts, public space, and early childhood

this action was to offer options for parents and children The action in the parks and gardens aimed to promote
to come together and experience art, connecting families the artistic and convivial revitalization of the city’s spaces.
with the city, and collaborating directly with municipal The field of culture and artistic practices has been one of
regulations for early childhood. This collaboration aimed the most affected by the covid-19 pandemic due to the very
to provide playful and welcoming spaces for children and nature of its actions, which traditionally require encounter
enable families to enjoy cultural activities. and presence. As far as young children are concerned, the
However, at the beginning of the project, the period of social distancing has created gaps that we are still
municipal parks were not yet open to scheduling artistic trying to fill, both in the social and educational fields.
and cultural activities. This led to a slight adaptation of During the coronavirus pandemic, adults in their
the project, with activities taking place in the gardens homes were unprepared for children to be around
and squares adjacent to municipal public libraries. their families 24 h a day. Many appeared to be
Subsequently, Aclimação Park also joined the project. As unaware of their young children’s need to play
a result, we performed ten EmQuanta presentations in freely. It seems that play, at least in big cities, has
five public facilities across the five regions of the city of ended up being officially recognized as a “school
São Paulo: Monteiro Lobato Children’s Library (center), activity” rather than a cultural action that is
Hans Christian Andersen Library (east), Álvares de characteristic of being a child, of their corporality,
Azevedo Library (north), Álvaro Guerra Library (west), of their ways of existing, researching themselves,
and Aclimação Park (south). In Figure 2, below, we can others, and the shared world .
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see the adaptation of the show to the garden of Álvares de
Azevedo Public Library. In 2022, many of Núcleo Quanta’s spectators were born
during the pandemic and had limited contact with people
or children other than their own families. Others had their
interactions interrupted at a very early age, which affected
the development of certain cognitive, linguistic, and
social skills. The open space of urban squares now broke
the everyday life of the apartments, thus broadening the
children’s experiences in using their bodies in interaction
with the performances, the landscape, and other families.

Interaction is extremely important for children’s
development. The National Curriculum Guidelines
for Early Childhood Education (DCNEI) present
the concept of the child as a historical subject with

Figure 1. EmQuanta, dança para crianças pequenas e seus pais (dance rights, who, through interactions, relationships,
for young children and parents). Itaú Cultural, 2013. Photo by Cris Glass. and daily practices they experience, builds their
personal and collective identity. [...] through
interaction with others and the world, children
understand the elements that surround them,
elaborating meanings and significations about
the environment and culture, and, in this way,
constructing their learning .
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Beyond reinventing ways of creating and living together
and resisting the processes of annihilation of survival
caused by the virus or a government often indifferent to
the suffering of millions of Brazilians during the pandemic,
we analyze the experience of creating art with children in
parks in 2022. We do so with questions in mind: What
have we learned from this experience? How have artists
and spectators broken their isolation and touched on their
constitutions as subjects of culture and inhabitants of the
Figure 2. EmQuanta: artistic action in the garden of Alvares de Azevedo city? How do collective artistic events mobilize encounters
Public Library, July 02 2022. Photo by Wilson Julião. and enrich the public spaces?

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 6 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1668