11.29.06
-POST-10—Ponto_02_Casulo–
My second visit to a Ponto de Cultura. South East Sao Paulo, “Real Parque” and “Jardim Panorama”. This one was in the border with the “periferia“ . It was a great venue and its story is quite amazing. Project Casulo started with the investment from the favela’s rich neighbours. A considerable investment from lots of different macro companies made the beginning of the project possible. This investment was certainly good to the local area and possibly one of the best ways to avoid drug trafficking and crime. The venue has 4 floors, dance classes, drum classes, Multimedia studio and a Ponto de Cultura. This really shows Brazil as the land of contrasts. A rich neighbourhood sharing walls with a Shanty town, but this time the rich had no other solution than help. In between many partnerships they have with macro companies (more here) such as Deutsche Bank, Bradesco, Nestle, Microsoft; the one with the Ministry of Culture seems to work fine and they already have some media publish in the estudio livre database.
- NOT similar to the first Ponto I visited, Internet connection here was less than 1 Mega, but both Fluxo TV and Brazcast worked perfectly. I’ve met Paco born in 1988 and he was already a Linux expert. He is the strong link between the project Casulo and the Pontos de Cultura. It is notorious the open source enthusiasm I could feel in this place. We will be back in January to do a workshop on how to use Fluxo TV and Brazcast.