Tvlata, 2007
Neokinok TV
TVlata is an experimental educational television project carried out by young men and women in the Alagados neighbourhood of Salvador de Bahía (Brazil).

The project began based on workshops organized and produced by the Spanish International Cooperation Agency for Development (www.aecid.es), carried out with the Grupo Cultural Bagunçaço (www.bagunsite.org.br) in Salvador de Bahía. Neokinok.tv (www.neokinok.tv) was asked to run one of the workshops, and they proposed educational contents related to experimental television, bringing together a series of arts (music, theatre, etc.) and technologies (information science, electronics, etc.). The project was called TVLATA and took place during May, June and December 2007. The project was well-received by participants and the entire community and continues growing. At present, a second part is being prepared to be held in 2008.

From the start, the idea was to build a communication laboratory based on audiovisual creation proposals and tools. The young men and women who participated in the activities of Bagunçaço produced works such as texts, images, music and films with the knowledge they were acquiring. This project can be seen on the Internet, at www.tvlata.org, a dynamic Web site where various types of files can be published. The Web site has over seventy videos of various lengths, made by the participants, with subject matter related to their local culture and their lives in the area, as well as education, fiction, etc.

The main office of Bagunçaço is located in the Os Alagados (The Drowned Ones) community. The neighbourhood owes its name to the fact that it is built on land won from the sea, originally with “palafitos”, houses built on wooden stilts with tin walls over the still waters of the bay. The area has continued to grow to house over one hundred thousand residents, which makes it one of the largest favelas, or shanty towns, in Salvador. Until now, this area was portrayed on conventional television only in terms of its violence and poverty. With TVLATA, their own communication media, the youth of Alagados show another side of the community and talk about their everyday lives and their values from a different perspective, strengthening their identity and self esteem, expressing reality as they see it, with different audiovisual creation lines, novels, historical images, etc. Alagados is a community poor in economic resources but rich in culture, with plenty of creative motivation. Other specific objectives of the project are to: offer digital literacy and audiovisual training for youths and teenagers, contribute to the social cohesion of the youth of the area through strengthening their cultural identity, bring education and culture closer together, enhance the leading role of civil society, stimulate creativity, and open public spaces.