Tudo bem: Queen Mary delegation visits Brazil to celebrate achievements and deepen collaboration with partners

People networking at the People's Palace Projects do Brazil

The busy five-day trip saw staff:

• Meet with key partners in Brazil including Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FioCruz) to explore ways to work closer together on research and education portfolios.
• Raise awareness of Queen Mary’s ground-breaking and impactful research with partners in Brazil.
• Celebrate 20 years of People’s Palace Projects in Brazil.
• Showcase the projects funded through the Brazil Accelerator Fund from 2022/23 and shine a light on future projects currently in the works.

People’s Palace Projects

People’s Palace Projects is an arts research centre that brings together artists, activists, academics and audiences to challenge social and climate injustices through the power of the arts. It is a subsidiary of Queen Mary University of London.

This year People’s Palace Projects do Brazil celebrated 20 years of work at an event at Casa Rio in Rio de Janeiro on Monday 11 September. 

The event included performances, an exhibition also saw the launch of two UK Research and Innovation funded toolkits launched:

1. A mental health toolkit for civil society organisations.
2. A climate crisis/environmental toolkit for schools.

Professor Paul Heritage, the Director and Founder of People’s Palace Projects, said: “People's Palace Projects is about that word: people. That’s what we’ve been thinking about, thinking about all the people who have helped to make this work together. At the heart of our work is the people we work with.”

The Brazil Accelerator Fund

In 2019, Queen Mary, Fiocruz, FGV and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) pledged a combined £160,000 to create the Brazil Accelerator Fund – enabling the development of scalable research collaborations. In 2022 a further £150,000 was committed by Queen Mary, FGV and Fiocruz – with seven projects funded and currently under way.

The delegation in Brazil showcased some of the research funded through the Brazil Accelerator Fund, including:

• Professor Paul Heritage who spoke about the Manguinhos project, which looked at life trajectories and local social networks as a tool for promoting mental health.
• Professor Oyinlola Oyebode and Jonathan Filippon who spoke about their work around public policies in Brazil that tackle hunger and poor nutrition in vulnerable communities.

FGV research symposium

The symposium at FGV between Tuesday 12 and Thursday 14 September brought together experts from different areas and countries to explore some of the main challenges faced by the Brazilian population today, including: the impact of climate change; communication and the new social order; and tax reform and the fiscal framework.

Speaking about the trip, Professor Frances Bowen said: “Joining the FGV research symposium will help to deepen our research partnerships. Working with FGV over the past few years has shown us that our two universities are highly aligned in our visions to use our global research networks for social impact. After awarding the most recent round of the Brazil Accelerator Fund we are excited to see the outcome. We look forward to exploring further ways of working together in the near future.”

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