ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways various community museums in Brazil practise social museology. The process of adopting United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recommendation was initiated in Brazil, which fostered debates and technical work for its implementation. In 2009, the Brazilian Institute of Museums was created to manage national policies for museums. The hypothesis was that fostering community museums in problematic social contexts, some of them in favelas, could directly or indirectly boost local development. The museum’s communication processes encompass a broad vision connected to distant events and places. Fostering community-based museums help people see the city as a symbol for the pursuit of a future with social justice, as opposed to more hegemonic processes. The visual artist, Cleiton Gos, is painting the walls inside the museum, including the chapel and the kitchen. He is trying to bring representative women figures of the community to be ‘enthroned’ or immortalized in the museum.
