the Freirian city collective
We are a collective committed to promoting transformative education inspired by the principles of critical urban pedagogy. Our goal is to create a space where education and participation intertwine, strengthening citizenship and driving social change.
what we do
We believe in critical urban pedagogy as a form of education for citizenship, a support for the necessary social imagination to transform democracy and the world, towards green and digital transitions.
Our action includes: reading and sharing about the legacy of the pedagogue Paulo Freire; designing and stimulating more innovative and inclusive participatory processes; creating content focused on critical urban pedagogy; supporting community initiatives to redefine public spaces
who we are
We are an informal collective of women, united by the belief in the transformative power of critical urban pedagogy. Our previous experiences extend from Brazil to Germany, and now we gather in Portugal, aligning our constantly evolving knowledge about the world we inhabit. As a multidisciplinary collective, we draw on diverse expertise, including architecture, urban planning, sociology, and various other fields. This enables us to approach social and urban challenges in a comprehensive and innovative way.
Carol Farias
Urbanist Architect (UEG, 2005), she had worked in design offices of different architectural typologies, with an emphasis on housing. As an analyst architect at Caixa Econômica Federal, a federal bank in Brazil, she had worked in the monitoring of projects and public works and in the provision of technical assistance to public institutions and social movements. Co-founder of Sobreurbana, a collaborative micro-urbanism and cultural production studio, based in Goiânia/Brazil, where she has practiced tactical urbanism aligned with training for urban action and active citizenship. Specialist in Architectural and Urban Sustainable Environmental Rehabilitation (UnB, 2015), Master in Design and City (UFG, 2018), with a dissertation on Tactical Urbanism, PhD in Architecture of Contemporary Metropolitan Territories, specialized in Digital Architecture (Iscte-IUL, 2022) , with a thesis on the co-production of technopolitical interfaces for local development. Currently, she is a researcher at Dinâmia’CET / Iscte-IUL, where she is part of the “Care (4) Housing - A care through design approach to address housing precarity in Portugal” project team. She is also a member of the NGO Women in Architecture, and Andorinha, A-GRUPA and Freirian City Collectives. During the last years, she has been working in partnership with several Portuguese municipalities, such as Lisbon, Oeiras and Porto.
Carolina Barreiros
Carolina studied architecture in the University of Porto, and since 2014 has been involved with projects related to the right to the city, public space and mobility in different institutions. She worked with education in the Cultural Inclusion Laboratories at Instituto Tomie Ohtake and was part of the team of the educational programme at Instituto Lina Bo and P.M. Bardi - Casa de Vidro. For 6 years she was a member of the apē-studies in mobility group, where she developed mobility and urbanism projects, and since 2021 works in the architecture and participation association Rés do Chão.
Cibele Kojima
Cibele is an urban designer and project manager whose work aims to build more inclusive cities. She is a skilled process facilitator and researcher in civic education and international cooperation who brings experience from the public sector, civil society, and international agencies, such as UN-Habitat. She has facilitated workshops for civic education since 2016 and believes that innovation can contribute immensely to a more just world if it aims to tackle the right problems.
Cibele co-founded the NGO ViaAustroBoreal based in Berlin and acting in Germany and South America, focusing on sustainable development and international cooperation. With the NGO Paulo Freire Gesellschaft Berlin she has conducted collective mapping workshops and coordinated the training program "Sustainable but Colonial?" resulting in the bilingual audioguide "Der Weg des Kaffees – koloniale Spuren der Kaffeekultur in Kreuzberg".