Creative strategies and homeless people: Occupational therapy, art, culture and sensitive displacement

Abstract

The population that finds on the streets an alternative for their own survival and for sorting out their identities, is marked by a number of disruptions and violation of rights, resulting in vulnerability processes and social disaffiliation, given the current socioeconomic conditions and the neoliberal rationality. There is a need of innovative work that can add different sectors and knowledge, which defend the strengthening of a support network and services that aims the enfranchisement of the individuals, promote social participation and respect their diversity. Therefore, it is reported the experience of an extension project that promoted creative strategies to operate with the homeless from an arts and culture perspective. In order to do so, the weekly activities workshops promoted experimentations for the participants, aiming to express their potentialities, from the themes and requests relevant to the group, producing art, dynamics, and products that reflected the culture of the streets. Sensitive displacements were produced, noticeable to those involved, making the participants protagonists of their own expressions. The encounters took on creative proportions and composed new experiences of occupational therapeutic formation and practices in the social field. In defense of respect, appreciation of the human dimensions and capacities, especially of the groups in a vulnerable situation, associated with actions that aim to promote and extend their human and social rights.