Wednesday 10 March '10

An Education

Monday afternoon after a good lunch in the park we meet the education team. Carlo shows us a map of the city and explains that education is the make or break of the 2010 Bienal. In 2008 it got a bad name for being closed off and disconnected from the city folk. Not helped by the fact that as a concept a whole floor of the Bienal was left empty, which was subsequently raided by graffiti aritsts.

To answer this they have set a target for 2010 to have 400,000 to take part in the education programme (the overall headcount for each Bienal is 1 million. For this they are recruiting somewhere in the region of 300 education staff.

School children from across the ciy will be bussed in and out, class rooms built and the army of art teachers put to work to shape the Paulinos of the future.

In the evening we go for a quick drink in a residency programme set up by Helmut from Rio in another Niemeyer apartment block, meeting other artists and checking out the cool blue bathroom.

Then onto a Japanese restaurant to do some top drawer sushi. Sao Paulo has the oldest and largest Japanese community (ever) with over 2 million resident.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 10/03/10 at 21:57 0 Comments