Free expression of young people through Fanzine: resource for social occupational therapy

Abstract

METUIA's centre at UFSCar (Federal University of São Carlos) has developed, for more than ten years, social interventions in the youth universe based in Social Occupational Therapy regarding education and citizenship defense. This study made use of Activities Workshops with youngsters that attend to a Public School and/or a Youth Center located in the suburb. The objective was to elaborate, produce and distribute fanzines, in order to enhance alternative ways of communication, free expression and creative process, as well as to analyze the production of fanzines as a resource of social-occupational therapy, in practices that articulate both formal and non-formal spaces of education. The discussion of the intervening process, both in terms of education and of therapeutic occupational actions, has been done based in Paulo Freire and other similar authors in the field of Social Occupational Therapy. Among the results, it was found that the processes around the fanzine became a resource for promoting insights related to youngsters' experiences, a widening of repertory and individual and collective projects, allowing (and encouraging) opinions that question institutions like "family", "school", "police", the "drug traffic". The possibilities of circulating fanzines and its content weigh up this resource, that becomes, from de point of view of their producers, interesting and dangerous simultaneously, because of the exposure it determines; this results in a need for dialogue and articulation among the youngsters, community and social equipment, promoting and encouraging social technologies.