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Canal Futura



Address and contact details

Paula Taborda dos Guaranys
Rua Santa Alexandrina 336
3o andar - Rio Comprido - Rio de Janeiro - RJ
Phone: +55 21 3232 8800
Fax: +55 21 3232 8026
Email: internationalrelations@futura.org.br
Eebsite: www.futura.org.br

Project partners

CNI
Turner/CNN
CNT
FIESP
FIRJAN
Fundação Bradesco
Fundação Itaú Social
Fundação Vale do Rio Doce
Rede Globo
Instituto Ayrton Senna
Schering
SEBRAE
Votorantim

Location

Brazil

Background

Canal Futura is a project of Roberto Marinho Foundation launched in Sep´97 and broadcast to 68 million Brazilians. It is the first television channel totally aimed at educational affairs, showing programs 24 hours a day. Futura reaches an audience of 14 million people, through satellite dishes, cable, mini satellite dishes and lately its signal has been opened to local educational network; the first one was TV Pernambuco.
Canal Futura is sponsored by a group of companies, foundations and institutes that believe in an educational project that sees the TV network as the main instrument to reduce the serious educational problems in Brazil. Its schedule is directed to children, young people, worker, housewives and teachers; it also supports public and private Elementary and High School curriculums and provide services and information that is useful to the day-to-day life of Brazilians. In programs elaborated with the help of teachers, scientists and educators, the channel uses simple and clear language in order to speak with its audience.
More than just television to be watched, Futura is TV to be used. For this reason, the knowledge channel has formed a network of Directed Audiences that is today integrated by more than 9.200 thousand Brazilian institutions, among them schools, crèches, libraries, trades unions, firms, churches, hospitals, penitentiaries and community associations. The network is controlled by specially trained and skilled agents that organize the audience to receive and use the channel schedule in educational projects developed to fulfill the specific needs of those entities. With community mobilization, Brazilians, who have the TV as an instrument of information and leisure, start to use it as an educational tool.

Aims and objectives

• Brazil: the country is our origin and our source of inspiration and must be present in the language of our programs, in the faces and accents of our hosts. We believe Brazilian culture has a unique contribution to the world, and we want to be a vehicle of its expression.
• Cultural and educational pluralism: the cultural diversity of our people, our land, our arts in general, our costumes, our way of being, acting, working, teaching, and learning is a blessing in itself. Our pledge is to transmit the notion that Brazilian culture is not exclusive, but additory and inclusive.
• Interdependence and diversity: we value diversity and interdependence as basic conditions for a good relationship between people, organizations and communities. Mutual respect and the development of positive relations are essential components of our identity.
• Ethical relations with public and private sectors. Public welfare is always the priority. We are committed to encourage individual responsibility towards society.
• Community initiative: initiatives born from the gathering of a community in search of solutions for their educational and social problems receive priority status.
• Enterprising spirit: creative ideas, the individual desire to own a business, responsibility when looking for advance-ment and improvement in education, professional life and the development of the country are highly regarded.
• Quality and innovation: we look for quality in everything we do. We want our public to see our products as the best and most creative products that attend to their needs and surpass their expectations.
• Aesthetics: we are committed to aesthetics. We believe beauty educates, and the search for it must be part of everyone's life.
• Optimism: we are optimists in our attitude and objectives. We invest in a better future and we are committed to it, doing today everything we feel necessary to build it. Our commitment is to always illuminate solutions - no matter if they relate to internal administrative processes or the presentation of our programming to the public.
• Social communications: social communications entice us in every dimension: in the work place, in the relation with the public, in the promotion of citizenship. It must be used as a vehicle to promote values, actions, and projects geared towards the construction of a better Brazil.
• Society: our work must create value to all who develop a relationship with us - audience, partners, collaborators, investors and the society in general - and it must be perceived that way.

Participants

Journalists, educators, consultants and specialists in different areas such as social sciences, biology, chemistry and economy..

Target audience

Its directed to children, young people, worker, housewives and teachers, mostly the low-income population.

Beneficiaries

Children and people involved with children's education and children's rights.

Involvement of children

Canal Futura believe that it's really important to learn about the community where it is installed. It enables Futura to conduct social activities made effective by its employees, location of funds, donation of services or products. That is the main reason why Futura's projects encourage children to actively take part in our programming grid suggesting us new perspectives, approaches and themes to be discussed on TV.

Funders

Besides the partners mentioned above, Canal Futura would also like to thank the American Consulate in Rio de Janeiro, the Youth Department of São Paulo State, Sports and Leisure through the State Foundation for the Well-Being of Minors, Febem/SP.

Summary

PLAY IT TO LIFE
Based on Brazilian children folk songs, the project "Play it to Life" has been created to stimulate and support young participants who belongs to a social institution that works with juvenile rehabilitation. Some of the kids from FEBEM were involved in an art project that intends to support young musicians to show their talent and creation. Besides supporting the workshops, the project generated a CD recorded by these young people. Some of the songs were incorporated by the Futura Channel as the soundtrack of its children programming. Besides it, six music videos were produced to be broadcast on the channel's daily lineup.
The project was developed in partnership with the Youth Department of São Paulo State, Sports and Leisure ?through the State Foundation for the Well-Being of Minors, Febem/SP and Canal Futura. It incorporates music and television in an educational project among a group of teenagers who live in a social educational center in São Paulo.
Our aim is to give the teenagers an opportunity to work with musical education and rescue, through a playful activity, in order to achieve values from childhood and treasures from Brazilian culture. The project also offers a forum for these young boys and girls to act and be recognized, which contributes to social insertion and self-esteem. Being minors, their faces cannot be shown to preserve their identities. The boys use special make-up to conceal their faces. To celebrate the release of the CD and the project, a concert was held in São Paulo during the celebration of Futura five years anniversary. A musical group formed by seven art-educators from the institution accompanied the young people during the concert.

PLAY BAHIA
After the successful initiative of PLAY IT TO LIFE, Futura produced another project using music as an education and social inclusion element. PLAY BAHIA is a result of a partnership among the Consulate General of the United States of America / Rio de Janeiro, the Bagunçaço Group and Canal Futura. It demonstrates how music and television can become an educational action that goes beyond the limits of Alagados, where the young artists live, and reach other communities. In a country that lives on samba and swing like Brazil, not many people can resist the pulsing rhythm of the batuque. One might start by tapping fingers, shaking a matchbox, and, like magic, incorporating innumerous elements that, together, unleash a wave that pulses to the rhythm of the heart. And, when the sound comes from handmade instruments, that art shines with a very special glow. There are cans, steel barrels, plastic toilet flushes, and pieces of wood, among so many other discarded objects, which, in the hands of creative and talented young people are transformed into percussion instruments. These people are the ones who dictate the rhythm, and change for the better the life of an entire community. The authors of this musical art are members of the Cultural Group Bagunçaço; a social project launched in 1991, at the Alagados community, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Salvador, Bahia State. The goal of Bagunçaço Group is to promote the rights of children, adolescents and young adults through artistic, social and cultural activities, such as rehearsals, seminars, theater groups, workshops on art, the manufacture of musical instruments and computers, halfway houses, sports and education.
As a result, Futura produced another CD, a 23 minutes documentary, video clips and interstitials. For both projects Futura organized a show for the community, kids´s families and educators who took part of this initiative.

ANIMATED BOOKS
This show uses graphic design resources to animate famous Brazilian children´s books, from popular Brazilian authors. Kids interview the authors during this program.

FUTURA ANIMATES KIDS DRAW
Futura Channel organized a national contest inspired by Livros Animados show. Kids from all over the country sent their draw to be animated and aired on Futura. We got more than 3,000 letters.

Challenges

We see the acquisition of knowledge as the direct result of a process built by the dialogue among different areas of knowledge and interlocutors. Canal Futura, its generators and broadcasters, and the team involved in Community Mobilization are established as some of these interlocutors. Our function is to inform, generate questions, and establish relationships, in an interactive process. We will not dictate rules, norms or take the stand of sole keepers of knowledge, whether in our programs, or
in our actions. We intend to invoke the community participation on the production process in order to encourage them to achieve the knowledge.

Strength of the project

Every project mentioned previously emphasizes Futura's aim of being more than just a television station to be watched, but also a vehicle to be used by our viewers.
There are more TV sets than refrigerators in Brazil. Therefore, Futura believes that the television is more than an instrument of information and leisure, and should also be used as an educational tool. Canal Futura intends to introduce a new way of production which includes the community and our viewers on the project of knowledge.

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