Brazil’s Emancipation Network meets Health Humanities and Arts: Creative Curricula for At-Risk Communities to Address Inequalities

This partnership virtually brings together Brazil’s most vulnerable groups; an established, Brazilian grassroots social movement (The Emancipation Network); a Brazilian University networking platform promoting scientific and social communication in health, education and public policy (InformaSUS); community leaders; health professionals and Health Humanities and Arts (HHA) academics at the University of Edinburgh to address Brazil’s pervasive inequalities.

10, 000 young Brazilians living in urban favelas (slums); indigenous, rural and forest settings cut off from mainstream services; prisoners; LGBTQ+ and ethnic minorities experiencing discrimination are being upskilled in a participatory pre-University access training course on Collective Health on the Margins.

Co-created, immersive, virtual workshops using HHA methodologies are also unpacking marginalised participants’ experiences of inequality to identify urgent needs, future aspirations and imaginative solutions for specific vulnerable groups.

A citizen-led manifesto for change informed by project findings is setting out strategic next steps for bottom-up interventions to be fed upstream to shape policies, practices and subsequent research.