| Summary: | The seventeenth century São Miguel Chapel, located in a working class district of São Paulo city, had been in disuse for around 10 years. In the second half of the 1970s, the body managing this listed building faced the problem of how to revitalize it given the profile of the surrounding local population. The response to this problem, grounded on an initial ethnographic survey of local cultural production, involved mobilizing a substantial number of popular artists from the city's East Zone and led to the emergence of the Popular Movement of Art. Through an account of this experience and a debate with technical staff from CONDEPHAAT, the article explores some of the issues that situate the preservation of cultural heritage within a field of conflicting interests and ideologies.
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