Fostering cultural production and reading
In its first edition, the Local Tales Project benefited students from Açucena, Belo Oriente, and Santa Bárbara, having been extended to Guanhães, Virginópolis, and Divinolândia de Minas in 1918. The initiative seeks to encourage teenagers to read, tell stories, conduct interviews, and write stories based on local cultural memory, highlighting customs and characters from the interior of Minas Gerais.
Sponsored by CENIBRA, the Project is implemented by MC Produção Ltda and ed by the Ministry of Culture through the Cultural Incentive Act (Federal Act No. 8.313 of December 23, 1991, also known as the Rouanet Act).
The Project’s first stage consisted of a visit to participant towns to introduce the project proposal, schedule, and work method. It also relies on the of municipal governments.
The next stages are set to include an alignment with municipal education departments, the choice of participating schools and teachers, a storytelling workshop, he selection and production of short stories, and distribution of books containing the short stories produced.
The proposed scope of work consists of producing storybooks containing stories of communities based on interviews with residents conducted by students and teachers. The purpose is to rescue the oral memory, language, and history, encouraging reading, and valuing, retrieving, and recording local customs, traditions, and characters. A t effort involving teachers from municipal schools will be necessary; they will use classroom activities to encourage their students to carry out research aiming at book production. In a subsequent step, students will interview residents in search of stories, which will be transformed into short stories and gathered in three books to be distributed free of charge. The rescue, recording, and preservation of local history will be the outcome.
Fostering Reading
Brazil is among the top ten countries with the most students with low school performance in mathematics, reading, and science according to a report released in Paris by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which reviewed the educational situation in 64 countries. Of the 2.7 million 15-year-old students evaluated in Brazil, 1.4 million faced reading difficulties. To interrupt the cycle of low educational performance, the OECD recommends governments identify low-performing students and provide them with recovery strategies.
In such a context, the Local Tales Project represents a way to encourage reading and an important tool for improved school performance since it integrates students to cultural activities based on an identification and regionalization approach.
