Mutirão Drew Hemment Sampa

"hey bricos

i wrote a report of my trip to Metaprojeto, part of the Metareciclagem network, last december. but i didnt have time to check all the names and details, or get it finished.

i am sending the draft, unpolished report here as i was discussing with felipe plans to collect lots of materials to feed into documentation of Metareciclagem. no animals or children were harmed in the writing of this report, i hope no one is offended by any inaccuracies or mistakes.

eg - i couldnt remember the name of the place where metaprojeto is located, and i wish i had the name of the guy who was working at metaprojeto when we visited, he was really cool but i didnt catch his  
name, andre will know. it is not the finished article but for people to correct, cut up and  
use as you like.

some pics here http://www.futuresonic.com/ftp/metaprojeto_pics.zip

(also some from Monte Azul here http://www.futuresonic.com/ftp/monteazul.zip)

cheers, bricolurker"

Meta Report (Draft)
Drew Hemment/December 2007

"My first signs of bricolage were in Monte Azul, an area on the outskirts of São Paulo. It is a favela, but the favelados I met were full of hope rather than down and out. Some kids had made a junk yard band with broken crates, strips of wood and empty coke cans. Kites soared over the rooftops made from plastic bags on string. The sides of the roads were reinforced with old tyres. In the school old milk cartons were cut in half and used by the kids to store pens and crayons on their desks. In Brazil, I was told, creativity is  
necessary for life.

Metareciclagem, one of the earlier groups to adopt a Bricolabs approach, was introduced to me by Hernani Dimantas when I was in São Paulo for the Beyond Borders event in December 2007. Hernani arranged  
for me to visit Metaprojeto, one of the free computing and open source culture groups in the Metareciclagem network.

On 7th December 2007 I visited Metaprojeto in an outlying suburb of São Paulo. Andre Benedito was my guide, introduced to me by Hernani Dimantas, one of the founder Metareciclagem members. We drove for  
almost an hour from the centre of São Paulo and arrived at what used to be a detention complex, but had now been transformed into the venue for many community projects, rows of brightly coloured huts  
cascading down a hill side surrounded by lush greenery and the tower blocks and favelas beyond.

Greeting us on arrival at Metaprojeto, the Metareciclagem free computing and cultural centre was the local project coordinator. He runs activities there, including workshops and distribution of reconditioned computers. For the guys at Metaprojeto, digital inclusion is not about just technology so much as about people, community and creativity. A major factor for many is simply getting online. Music and video production, all using free and open source tools and software, is the focus for others. We watched short videos made by local people who dropped in to Media Projecto, some featuring cut-up animation, others involving music remixes of tracks released under a Creative Commons license.

That they open five days a week, Monday to Friday, each day 9am till 5.30pm. My guide ran activities on alternate mornings and afternoons. These were not structured training sessions so much as informal  
exchange. For many people visiting, this would often begin with a tour of the World Wide Web. Many people in Brazil have heard of it, but never been there. Then there would usually be a conversation  
about what they might want to do and how it could be facilitated, possibly involving some multimedia instruction.

Robots are one of the team's favourite pass times. The motors from floppy drives and other discarded computer equipment were hacked together with motors and parts bought for just a few Reas from second  
hand component stores. Several robots made from computer mouses were seen whizzing around.

A workshop was filled with stacks of old computers. Computer components also decorated the space, with circuit boards adorning the door, painted mouse mobiles dangling from the ceiling, and brightly  
coloured boxes mid way to finding a new home. The components such as circuit boards that could not be reconditioned are cut up, treated, and turned into keyrings and chess boards in a scheme known as  
Metaproducto. These were sold every two months on a stall to bring money into the project.

The next building down the hill housed the open access computer labs and where local people can get online or get experience in multimedia production. Several rooms were filled with people and equipment. Around 25 people use the space each day.

Metareciclagem began with a group of people including Felipe Fonseca, Hernani Dimantas and others began discussing online the potential of recycling computing to address the huge problems with digital  
inclusion in Brazil. An opportunity to turn talk into action came when two started working at an organisation that distributed unwanted goods of all kinds, and introduced a focus on computing. A number of  
young people joined them, working from a building in a park in a Brazilian city, reconditioning and distributing old computers. An artist started painting the computer boxes, which were grey and  invariably dirty, giving them a human touch.

The project was brought to greater prominence when a feature article was written in a major São Paulo newspaper. This instantly led to the donation of 200 computers, and more people started visiting the  
project, including politicians.

More projects were established, including some key ones in São Paulo. Metareciclagem developed into a network of groups and a mailing list. The mailing list was key, with 300 members, serving to share  
information, tips and advice, and spread the methodology like spores in the wind.

Several groups now exist, but many others have also faded away. They tend to be fragile, lacking a firm structure or long term support. Staffed by a mix of volunteers and paid staff, they are led by the  
people with the passion and commitment, many of whom will not have run similar groups before.

The groups varied greatly, some with a well established building, others just groups of people, or an individual who would turn a room into their flat into a workshop and drop in centre, transforming it into a Meta Appartment. Andre asked me if similar groups exist in the UK. I told him about Access Space, and about how the Manchester Ponto de Cultura was inspired by groups in Brazil such as Metareciclagem. In the UK a digital divide exists between haves and have nots, but it is on a different level in Brazil.

I asked Andre for examples of project turning people's lives around. He could tell me of success stories, such as the guy who came to the centre and is now running a computer store. But Andre warned me that  
in Brazil you should not always expect results of that kind, or for them to come so quickly. For many in Europe Brazil is a visionary model that can inspire us. But for many people in Brazil it is about their very first step into the digital world, the first time they have used a computer, the first time they have been online."

"We are just at the beginning, we have so far to go." - Andre Benedito
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