PLAYING AND RECREATING: WHEN CHILDREN CONJUGATE VERBS IN CIRCULAR TIMES
Veronica Pinheiro
30 October 2025
We arrived in October 2025 to experience Motherwater. À beira da Baía de Guanabara, berço de mundos, as crianças recriam o tempo brincando.
The Ways of Knowing Group closely followed the Living School House residency, coordinated by Cristine Takuá. Following closely is school and learning. There are a lot of people following along, but they are not close. We live in times of tired people with tired eyes, who cannot see up close. A time full of unrest, where adults speculate conclusions and record everything on mobile phones and electronic devices. Adults entrust their memories to clouds, external memories and hard drives. Living these days accompanying children, young people, adults and the elderly has shown us that children still write memories on their bodies. Children, when faced with something they cannot name, fall silent, open their eyes and allow the information to be stored under their skin. Without haste, they imagine, touch and are touched.
The Living School House artistic residency began on 13 October, and on the last day, representatives from Escolas Vivas, who spent two weeks waking up and weaving memories, welcomed children from the Vila Kennedy favela to the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. This time, the children from Pedreira were unable to make it to MAM to experience this encounter with Living Schools. The city of Rio de Janeiro has not allowed children from some areas of the city to travel safely. Faced with the possibility of postponing the workshop that was part of the residency programme, we remembered a group of children coordinated by our dear volunteer Greice Souza. Greice and her children live in Vila Kennedy, in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro. In this favela, in addition to all the social and environmental challenges, there is a children's samba school, founded in 1991, called ‘There are still children in Vila Kennedy.’ This name announces that there is still life and there will be sunshine and tomorrow even on difficult days.
The children of VK, Greice and her children have been present at Selvagem since the beginning of the Children's Group. With them, we experienced our first workshop and our first outing. They return to Selvagem in the Motherwater Cycle, vibrating with all their usual strength and vitality. They arrived after lunch, happy, with balls in their hands and colourful backpacks. ‘They're here,’ I wrote to Madeleine in a message.
The sun was shining in a blue sky when the children arrived. The waters smiled with delicate welcoming movements. For that day, friends from afar and lifelong companions. Diego Brito came from Tocantins with his Buriti guitar to bring melody to the day. Marcela Amaral, from Goiânia, brought her pedagogy of Daringness [Atrevimentos]. Both are playful people who weave deep dialogues with universities, kilombos, and villages.
Carol Delgado brought chaos and the certainty of an incredible day. Greice and Thainá brought the children.
Thais Desana, resident artist representing the Bahserikowi Centre for Indigenous Medicine, the Tukano-Dessano-Tuyuka Living School, welcomed the children at the Stone-Snake-Canoe and guided our visit to the Living School House studio-exhibition as if welcoming cousins into her home. With her memories awakened and knowledgeable about her history and nation, Thais spoke of the beginning of time, the songs of her people, and how all these things inhabit her paintings. All the works in the exhibition were presented to the children, works from the Guarani, Maxakali, Tukano-Desano-Tuyuka, Huni Kuin and Baniwa Living Schools. We navigated between yãmiy, times and dimensions.
Canoe in motion, our teacher Thais Desana told us about Milk Lake, which we call Guanabara Bay, and about the eyes of the beings and objects we observed. Thais' paintings also have eyes; they look at us while being looked at. While the children allowed themselves to listen, feel, look and be looked at, the adults filmed with cameras and mobile phones. While the pores and pupils of the little ones tried to capture the sounds and colours of the unknown chords produced by the vibrations of the fishing lines – which, stretched across Buriti's guitar, generated sound waves that fished for available hearts – somewhere in a cold, impersonal mechanical memory, the adults captured sounds amplified by the sound box made from the wood of the Buriti palm tree.
The encounter between the children of Rio and the Living Schools gave us the happy certainty that children do not put life on hold. They do not collect information to read, listen to, and watch later. Children live in a circular present and are able to play, reinterpreting and creating memories. They were there. Being there, they visited Thais' memories and dreamed of futures for themselves and for the waters. I heard from a friend a while ago that the best place to be is next to a child. In our last workshop, alongside the children, I realised how much we are concerned with possible futures and are not giving due attention to the present. Children, however, are here, living today, playing at being. At MAM, they played at observing and painting Guanabara Bay. They played at being Thais Desana. They played about creating a Museum of Modern Art in Vila Kennedy. As I write this diary page, I receive a message from the children saying that they need to create more works to tell stories of a beautiful world in the favela. Invitation accepted, I will soon tell you about these new adventures.
Photos: Ana Rezende
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Diego Brito, @projetoveredas ; Cultural identity and musicality: a study of the buriti guitar in the Barra de Aroeira quilombo community in Tocantins
Marcela Amaral @encruzilhadasdosonhar ; Pedagogies of Daringness