Overview

Just as clean water lacks during floods, we live in societies saturated with information that lacks knowledge. We need tools that enrich our knowledge and give us the vigour to struggle for a decent life.

UPEA - Universidade Popular Empenho e Arte is an initiative that seeks to democratise relevant knowledges and information to strengthen active citizenship and encourage the will to strive for a better society by making it more effective. This democratisation must be thought of in several dimensions: on the one hand, in the way knowledges are produced and consumed; and, on the other, in the expansion of the range of knowledges that intertwine and dialogue. We intend to connect knowledges made of study and knowledges made of practical and everyday experience, of the street and of life; knowledges that conveyed by words, gestures and sounds; academic, artistic, social intervention, cultural knowledges. In short, UPEA aims to promote dialogues of knowledges and actions committed to the struggle for dignity for all, for a more just society, for social transformation, for the valorisation of progressive alternatives.

The founding organizations of UPEA are the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Chapitô, D. Manuel Martins Parish Centre, the Campo de Ourique Parish Council, the Saramago Foundation, Moinho da Juventude Association, and the Pantalassa Association. The founding organisations invite other organisations to join this educational project. UPEA will organize single sessions or courses on different topics in the form of dialogues of knowledges and actions, with each session witnessing its diversity. The sessions will be promoted by an organisation or in partnership of two or more organisations. At an early stage, these dialogues will be agreed upon by the founding organisations, but as other sessions take place their participants will play an active role in choosing the topics to be addressed and the people to be invited to in future sessions. The same theme may require several moments that can be repeated in different places according to the request of organisations or groups that can host them and guarantee conditions to hold them.

All activities are free and open to everyone, all on a voluntary basis. Organisations or groups that promote sessions or courses may invite other entities or individuals not included in any of the organisations or groups that integrate it.