Education | Initiatives use artistic interventions to promote racial literacy and fight racism in the school environment
*First published July 24th, 2025
*Photograph: Ana Clara Ferreira da Silva (left) and Marcelo Thierry Salgado (right) are students at Colégio Estadual Coronel Afonso Emílio Massot and work as trainee mediators in the Afroconto project. (Credits: Pietro Scopel/JU)
Getting a group of 14 children to pay attention to a storytelling session is no easy task. Side conversations and curiosity can be challenging for anyone or any activity trying to hold their attention.
Such is the case with some of the storytelling sessions organized by Afroconto, an outreach project linked to the Institute of Psychology, Social Work, Health, and Human Communication at UFRGS (Instituto de Psicologia, Serviço Social, Saúde e Comunicação Humana). To present students of all ages with anti-racist and anti-ableist narratives through children’s and young adult literature, Afroconto visits schools in Porto Alegre to read books and carry out activities that encourage classroom discussions on these topics.
At Colégio Estadual Coronel Afonso Emílio Massot, in downtown Porto Alegre, where Afroconto has been running weekly activities since 2022, the storytellers sometimes struggle to hold the kids’ attention. This is what happened during an activity observed by the university’s newspaper (Jornal da Universidade) team on a June afternoon with a first-grade class. Among the students’ side conversations and curiosity about the library books, it was difficult to hold the children’s attention for the reading of Educando Crianças Antirracistas (Raising Anti-Racist Children, in free translation), by Bárbara Carine.
Even so, through popular songs for their age group and side games, some topics managed to capture the students’ attention. During the reading of one book’s passage that highlights different hair types and their beauty, a girl put her hands on her head: “My hair is kinky, it sticks up, but when I take a shower it goes down,” she said. “Mine is curly, just like the teach’s, and it falls down,” said another, pointing to her own hair.
The “teach” in question is Luana Lopes, an UFRGS International Relations student and a scholarship holder with Afroconto. She was one of those responsible for telling the story to the class. Alongside her, Afroconto-trained reading mediator Marcelo Salgado, a 14-year-old 7th-grade student at Colégio Massot, was also responsible for this task.
Afroconto’s goal is to train and empower members of the school community so they can carry on Afroconto’s initiatives when the organizers are not present. Marcelo was suggested for the activity by the school’s faculty as a way to encourage reading and student engagement. He has now been part of the school’s storytelling team for a year, choosing the works to be presented and reading them aloud to his peers.
“The public libraries in Porto Alegre are underfunded and there haven’t been any public calls to fill librarian positions, so they’re going to shut down,” explains Anilton Nunes, a master’s student at UFRGS’s graduate program in Social and Institutional Psychology and a member of Afroconto. “In our training, a librarian guides our work and is responsible for the technical aspects.”
Afroconto also trains mediator Ana Clara da Silva, who is a 7th-grade student at Massot. As an aunt to a young boy, she says that she has a knack for dealing with children, even the most energetic ones, and sometimes she learns more from the storytelling sessions than from her formal classes. “We need to be patient, but I like it. This activity teaches me to be more patient,” she says. “I enjoy listening to the children and chatting with them.”
Lopes, who has just begun taking part in the storytelling sessions, states that the most striking aspect of the experience is noticing how the students are affected by the activities. “We really put ourselves into the work and want to be there, and that has a big impact on us,” she says.
Art can help envision new futures
In 2020, UFRGS PhD student in Languages and Literature Tainã Rosa created the podcast A Cor da Voz (The Color of the Voice, in free translation). She intended to contribute to the ever-growing discussions on Blackness and bring an academic perspective on the subject to the broader audience. Each episode features Black scholars who discuss topics such as structural racism, Afrofuturism, and Black literature. “From a conceptual perspective, I wanted a Black channel, with Black guests and themes that speak directly to Black people,” she explains.
From its very beginning, the podcast was designed to translate academic concepts and ideas into a language accessible to all audiences. As A Cor da Voz started to gain visibility, Rosa’s students, public school students in Alvorada, became interested in the project and wanted to listen to the episodes.
But getting the material to the children was not so simple. “Despite the fact that we’re undergoing a technological change, that’s not the reality for many schools. Many still don’t have internet access,” Rosa says. She then realized that it was time to adapt the format so students could access the podcast.
That is how, in 2021, she decided to turn the podcast episodes into books that could reach anyone, anywhere. The episodes were transcribed in an interview format, retaining the regional expressions and accessible language, and compiled into three volumes under the same name as the podcast.
Today, in addition to being used in graduate programs at UFRGS, the books have been distributed to all schools in the municipal educational systems of Gravataí and Alvorada, in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre. To reach an even broader audience, the digital version of the books is also offered free of charge.
This year, the podcast took another step towards engaging teenagers: the episodes were transformed into comics. Visual artist Fabrício Martins, from Alvorada, turned the episodes into colorful and imaginative illustrations.
According to Martins, who studied in Alvorada’s public schools, the art classes offered in these schools lack practical and theoretical depth. He says that the opportunity to explore the visual arts came from a volunteer project in which he participated as a teenager. Now, as an undergraduate in Visual Arts, Martins sees art as a source of opportunities for children and teenagers from marginalized communities. “It’s a chance to have other options in life,” he states.
Rosa, who taught in Alvorada’s public schools for seven years and also worked in underserved communities with students in vulnerable situations, highlights the importance of introducing children and young adults to successful Black researchers. She believes that this helps young people realize that they can succeed too. The impact of the initiative is also reflected in the podcast’s popularity among teenagers: although it wasn’t originally designed for them, 12% of its listeners now fall within this age group.
“I think that what resonates most with teenagers is showing them that they can have a life beyond the one in marginalized communities and everything that affects the place where they live, like violence and crime, which sometimes seem like the only possibilities”.
Tainã Rosa
Antiracist art as a pedagogical tool
Gládis Kaercher, a professor at UFRGS’s School of Education (Faculdade de Educação — Faced), believes that more important than understanding how inclusive arts contribute to education is reflecting on what kinds of art actually reach the classroom. In many schools, the only form of art presented to students is classical art: Eurocentric and centered on the white male.
“The art that is chosen for schools has an impact on the white students we are educating,” she explains. “It shapes a white subject who only sees one version of humanity, the one that mirrors themselves, the white human.”
Moreover, it is important to understand how positive representations of Blackness shape Black children and teenagers’ self-esteem and subjectivity. Kaercher says that it is not enough for Black characters to be protagonists; they need to be the heroes of stories. “All of this will shape the construction of both Black and white subjectivities,” she points out.
“The way non-white people see themselves is directly tied to building self-esteem and self-image. The way white people see themselves, however, is directly tied to understanding and humanizing the other, someone who is different from them”.
Gládis Kaercher
Caroline Barroso, an instructional coordinator at Colégio Massot, explains that Afroconto’s work at the school began with the need to foster social change through education. In addition to encouraging reading habits, the project also promotes racial literacy from the early years. “I see [literature] as a gateway to this change and to raising awareness,” she says.
The school welcomes students from vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and Barroso believes that Afroconto’s work and the discussions on topics such as racism and ableism have also made it possible to develop a broader perspective and dialogue with each student’s reality. “We keep learning and exchanging through these experiences, developing critical thinking, and teaching students about their rights,” she observes.
However, with the decline of school libraries, especially in the public system, teaching these topics becomes more difficult. Without funds to purchase new books, many schools have outdated collections and older works that do not reflect the diversity present in society. Afroconto always provides the books used in their activities, which take place in both private institutions and schools located in areas of extreme socioeconomic vulnerability. The group brings its own books because school libraries rarely include works that address the themes the project engages with.
Kaercher states that recognizing art as a priority in this context of erasure is just as urgent as using it as a pedagogical tool to fight racism. “There is no better nourishment for the human soul than art in all its plurality. Every time art loses this plurality and becomes homogeneous and hegemonic, we all lose,” she concludes.
Translated into English by Brenda Bressanelli Marcon, undergraduate student enrolled in the course “Supervised Translation Training II (English)” of the Undergraduate Program in Language and Literature, under the supervision and translation revision of Professor Rozane Rebechi (P.h.D.) – IL/UFRGS.
:: Read in portuguese
Arte pode ser utilizada como ferramenta pedagógica na formação da subjetividade de crianças e adolescentes negros