The second Adelita Cartonera workshop for trainers and educators took place on December 2, 2008, as part of the Encuentro de Promotores de la Lectura (Meeting for the Promotion of Reading) at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. The workshop was coordinated by Doris Sommer, head of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University, which supports Adelita Cartonera.

More than 100 promoters of reading attended the workshop. Participants worked with written texts, paper, scissors, old cardboard boxes, clothesline cords, and plenty of creativity. They reinvented stories and made their own books out of recycled cardboard boxes and pieces of fabric.

Ángela Pérez, deputy cultural director of the Banco de Colombia, and Antanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogota, participated as instructors and helped other participants to explore different ways of promoting a love of literature and critical reading.

For example, the participants, working in pairs standing back-to-back, created spoken portraits from what their partners said of the characters in a text by António Lobo Antunes. They also made sculptures based on metaphors and displayed what they had written on long clotheslines.

This program receives the joint backing of Harvard University’s Cultural Agents Initiative as well as the University of Guadalajara.

Further information:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cultagen/programs.htm?paper