This initiative consisted of five workshops of playful-didactic activities, combined with five more illustration workshops, for children from 8 to 12 years of age. These are intended to raise interest in Portuguese as a heritage language (PLH), as well as to stimulate the continued use of Portuguese. The workshops were titled Julia Mann’s Memory Suitcase: Playing and Painting a Story in Portuguese. The “suitcase” contains printed materials and products that result from the children’s participation in the workshops (e.g., word games, books, passports, and postcards made from the drawings produced in the workshops depicting Portuguese as a language of heritage and illustration). The products that were deposited in the physical memory suitcase, are also available for download on the Leitorado Brasileiro Guimarães Rosa page on the Homepage of the University of Heidelberg. This means that other institutions can use these recreational activities to foster interest in Portuguese.

The workshops took place between October 2023 and January 2024, in Germany, in the cities of Bochum, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Munich. These cities were chosen because of the presence of non-profit entities, such as the Mala de Herança network and Elblingua, dedicated to the promotion of PLH.

The project was coordinated by Marília Pinheiro Pereira, a Leitora Guimarães Rosa and at the Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, and was being funded by the Brazilian Embassy in Berlin.

For further information, please refer to the network of institutions conducting the workshops and the network of the Guimarães-Rosa Institute in Heidelberg – IGR/HCIAS:

See the schedule of activities:

SCHEDULE