Territories of Knowledge

Contract for the project Territories of Knowledge (2025)

Addendum 1: Project Communication

Territories of Knowledges creates a situated space for exchange and mutual learning, bringing together activist communicators and artists engaged in collective practices in Belém (Brazil) and Berlin (Germany).

The project aims to build a bridge between Belém—where the United Nations Climate Conference (COP 30) will take place in November 2025—and Berlin, which hosted the first COP (COP-1) in 1995. It combines collective cultural and artistic practices, transmedia investigative journalism, and activist strategies to critically engage with colonial and developmentalist narratives about the Brazilian Amazon as well as discourses on climate change on a global scale.

Approach and Methodology

  • Participant Information: Participants represent diverse backgrounds across activism, communication, and artistic fields. Through collective learning and exchange, they will challenge dominant perspectives on the Amazon and the historical roles of the COP conferences. All participants are involved in social and environmental justice movements in different ways. Together, they will develop tools and processes to critically examine hegemonic discourse and imagery while also producing and circulating diverse narratives from marginalized voices.
  • Participatory and Situated Design: The project’s format will be shaped by the needs and practices of the participating groups and co-designed with them from the outset.
  • Methodological Foundations: The process draws on decolonial pedagogies, feminist methodologies, and community-based media practices to ensure that the project remains rooted in solidarity and collective knowledge production.
  • Objectives of Discussions: The discussions will center on the production of counter-narratives, grassroots communication, audiovisual materials, and journalism.
  • Multilingual Access: Multilingual exchange and translation will be central to the project, ensuring that materials and processes are accessible across language barriers.
  • Ethical Practices: Ethical protocols will be co-developed with participating groups to ensure consent, representation, and non-extractivism.

Key Areas of Discussion

Key points of departure for the discussions will include topics such as green capitalism and the financialization of nature. The project also highlights the structural barriers that often prevent local activists and communities—who protect the Amazon’s biocultural diversity—from having equal access to environmental debates in the Global North.

Outreach and Public Engagement

The outcomes of the project will be shared through public events in Belém and Berlin, as well as through grassroots networks, alternative media platforms, and community spaces, prioritizing accessibility and impact over visibility.

Project Origins and Partners

Territories of Knowledges is based on a proposal by Barbara Marcel and Camila Nobrega, commissioned and supported by Spore Initiative. It is rooted in research travel to Belém do Pará in 2024 and ongoing exchanges with various local groups and initiatives engaging in eco-social justice.

The 2025 edition of the project emerges from a close dialogue between groups in Belém and Berlin, Spore Initiative, and the collaborators Marcel and Nobrega, who continue to facilitate the project. Groups will be invited through a relational process based on ongoing exchanges and local recommendations, prioritizing those engaged in long-term struggles for territorial and ecological justice.

* The groups participating will be added as soon as they are identified and have decided to take part.