Hello, I'm Paco Barba, designer and photographer who works with a cultural center in Brazil, (Centro Cultural São Paulo), I hope this email finds you well. Interested in the compromise with our community, the work I have developed through out the years, working with a record label in Chicago, a museum and a community radio station, has given me the tools and opportunity to pursue my dream, creating a harmony on our community where cultural exchange is our door to the world. Therefore I'm pleased to present you with this project:

Working in conjunction with a Brazilian photographer who lives in Rio de Janeiro, we are creating a workshop about creativity using handmade photographic images as cultural exchange that reflects the differences and similarities of everyday life on the Favelas in Brazil and the Ghettos in the US through the eyes of kids, teenagers and young adults within the communities. By using a simple homemade camera (pinhole) made with recyclable materials (can, matchbox, soap box, etc.) the youths are taught how to make a camera, how to shoot as well as well as how to develop the film through a homemade inexpensive process.

Think about an handcrafted photographic postcard project made by kids and young adults, as if they were sending these postcards to each other from abroad to let the world to see their world. The idea is to create a workshop with teenagers and young adults in a Chicago community and in Rio de Janeiro or/and Salvador, Bahia Brazil and have Yollocalli Youth Center in Chicago U.S.A and the Museum Da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to organize, get the kids together throughout their extensive network with non-profits and, at the end of the workshop to organize and exhibition, therefore show the work of the kids.

The objective of this project is to integrate the kids to a program that allows them to work with their familiar surroundings and, through all different steps of the workshop create a positive impact on them by awaking their creativity at maximum. The result, images of everyday life with a camera made with recyclable materials.

We have H.O.L.A. organization (L.A.) and Yollocalli Youth Center (Chicago) and Pierre Verger Foundation in Salvador, Bahia Brazil on board to organize, recruit kids and let us use their space for the classes.

We are looking at a month or a month and half per city and we are hoping to have from 10 to 20 youths per workshop.