Governance Lab: Silo's Newest Publication

03 June - 2024

Silo invited mentors, collaborators, and proposers to contribute to a publication gathering a series of thoughts and achievements on Governance

The printed publication launched by Silo – Arte e Latitude Rural aims to be a means of collaboration to diversify perspectives on Governance practices, bringing them closer to people’s daily lives.

In addition to experience reports, the publication features extensive documentation, photographs, texts, and ideas on the research and prototypes developed during the Laboratory of Experimentation and Innovation in Governance, held between May and June 2022, at Silo Escola’s headquarters in Serrinha do Alambari.

Over the past 14 years, Cinthia Mendonça, founder and director of the organization, has been contributing to the adaptation and implementation of the laboratory model developed at MediaLab Prado (Madrid, 2005) for the Latin American context.

The Laboratory model applied by Silo proposes an environment that encourages collective and horizontal creation in a space open to different epistemologies, where participants can both learn and teach autonomously and self-managed.

Projects that come to a Laboratory cease to be individual initiatives and become collective actions of territorial, social, and cultural engagement, responding to demands that lie beyond the core of the project.

(credits: Paula Nardy)

For this edition of the Laboratory of Experimentation and Innovation in Governance, 7 proposals were selected from diverse fields of knowledge (agriculture, art, culture, education, science, technology, environment, and others), and developed with the support of collaborators and mentors at SILO’s headquarters during the Lab period. On this occasion, our mentors and collaborators were Cinthia Mendonça, Dandara Rudsan, Graciela Selaimen, Ítala Herta, Marcos García, Moisés Medrano, Paula Johns, Sebastián Cabezón, and Yurij Castelfranchi.

This edition sought to support the development of governance ideas and propositions capable of strengthening institutions and other collectives to navigate crises and renew the perseverance of their actions and impacts, bringing together groups (collectives, networks, and associations) from Latin America to experiment, create, and redesign governance forms in line with how groups operate in their territories.

We opened space to imagine, create, edit, and innovate organizational possibilities through more participatory forms, closer to our daily lives, addressing non-negotiable current demands such as climate change mitigation and adaptation guidelines, and effective actions in favor of diversity and care.

The publication launched by Silo, organized by Cinthia Mendonça, is an important step toward consolidating experiences of exchange and collective growth around Governance forms applied in Latin American projects.

The projects featured in this publication are: “Connecting governance to promote climate justice” (Associação Sorambuí), “Agroforestry Ecopedagogical Garden” (Centro Municipal de Educação Profissional do Ipojuca), “Welcoming the welcome” (Federação das Associações Catarinenses de Agroturismo Acolhida na Colônia), “Technologies for learning-coordinating-dreaming together” (Floristic), “Somatic Governance Processes” (Fórum Regional de Políticas Culturais do Médio Paraíba), “Playful Governance Tactics” (Laboratório Experimental de Cine), and “Weaving Autonomy for the Good Life” (Violetas Latinoamericanas).

The publication can be acquired by contacting us via email: contato@silo.org.br