Abstract
Women have created alternative means of registering their own personal, as well as social, collective memories and subjectivities in handcrafted, embroidered and other artisanal technique female narratives. The 'embroidery community' of elderly women in the Lagoinha Complex, a socially troubled urban area in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has shown an authentic resilient attitude against historical oppressions, such as discrimination related to gender, ethnicity, education, social class, and ageism. This is a follow-up project from "Lagoinha_Heritage Design Development" developed in 2018 and 2019, focused on raising awareness and triggering discussions about the bonds established between design and memory. It has brought to light the potential of the transformative and decolonizing praxis in art and design teaching and learning process, research and outreach programs. It also highlights the social, political and activist character of these interventions in order to encourage communities to envisage and develop the necessary conditions for their well- being. Adopting the oral history approach, this action might promote the making of new imagery narratives rooted in the territory. By means of participatory design, all participants can act as co-researchers, and co-designers. We, as facilitators of this process, aim at strengthening centers at the margins, by unlearning oppression and fostering autonomy.
Keywords
Aging; oral history; participatory design; autonomy
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.104
Citation
De Bernardi, A., José, E., Rezende, C.,and Franco, J.(2020) Like the Palm of My Hand: memories to redesign the city, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers - DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.104
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Like the Palm of My Hand: memories to redesign the city
Women have created alternative means of registering their own personal, as well as social, collective memories and subjectivities in handcrafted, embroidered and other artisanal technique female narratives. The 'embroidery community' of elderly women in the Lagoinha Complex, a socially troubled urban area in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has shown an authentic resilient attitude against historical oppressions, such as discrimination related to gender, ethnicity, education, social class, and ageism. This is a follow-up project from "Lagoinha_Heritage Design Development" developed in 2018 and 2019, focused on raising awareness and triggering discussions about the bonds established between design and memory. It has brought to light the potential of the transformative and decolonizing praxis in art and design teaching and learning process, research and outreach programs. It also highlights the social, political and activist character of these interventions in order to encourage communities to envisage and develop the necessary conditions for their well- being. Adopting the oral history approach, this action might promote the making of new imagery narratives rooted in the territory. By means of participatory design, all participants can act as co-researchers, and co-designers. We, as facilitators of this process, aim at strengthening centers at the margins, by unlearning oppression and fostering autonomy.