Popular education as a path to liberation

reflections from acervo da laje

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the importance of liberating education in contexts marked by vulnerability and absence of the State, based on the experience of the Acervo da Laje, located in the Subúrbio Ferroviário de Salvador-BA. In dialogue with scholars of education and popular thought, enrolled in the field of epistemologies of the South, we discuss the role of popular culture (systematically relegated to a peripheral and subordinate position), with its inexhaustible repertoire of other knowledge, memories and creations, as a way of insurgency and social liberation, in order to enable the formation of critical and participatory citizens in society. The main focus of this research is to investigate the educational effectiveness of the cultural actions promoted by Acervo da Laje, which aim to share knowledge and experiences with suburban residents, having life within the territory as the main existential reference, without distinction of ideological, academic formation or of any order. The research that resulted in this work is of a qualitative nature, with a phenomenological theoretical-methodological approach, of an exploratory nature. The entry into the empirical field was based on a work requested in a discipline as a special student, and, from this first contact, the preliminary project that was made consolidated my entry into the Master’s program Education and Contemporaneity (UNEB).