A Place of Seeing: People’s Palace Projects and the City of Rio De Janeiro

Abstract

Since 2002, Rio de Janeiro has been a place from where the People’s Palace Project (PPP) beholds the world. Created in 1997, the PPP is a research centre and a professional arts organisation that aims to explore how the arts can respond to urgent social crises and fight social injustice. In this article, the PPP’s artistic director, Paul Heritage, and research and project manager, Mariana Steffen, recover previous writings and engage in conversation to revisit the organisation’s history and its relation to the city of Rio de Janeiro. The PPP seeks to bring arts to life through research and collaborations, but most of all through listening. As we recount its previous projects and experiences — cocreated with a range of partners from the city’s peripheral urban communities —, we reflect on how the arts provide a new lens to view the city, to capture its nuances and reposition the slum (favela) on a map made of music, theatre and colour.