The Artistic Intervention Program for Professional Clowns

The Artistic Intervention Program for Professional Clowns is the Institute's key action and is carried out by about 10 artists who, in pairs or trios, follow the routine of visits to pediatric and geriatric wards of hospitals in the SUS Network, Institutional Shelter Units (UAI's), and Long Stay Institutions for the Elderly (ILPIs) in Minas Gerais. The unique relationship built, day after day, occurs because there is a continuity that strengthens bonds and brings effective results, whether in hospitals or institutional care. The clowns make visits twice a week, continuously, and when they shoot at the entrance of each wing, room, corridor or institution, they transform the environment, subvert the logic of space, take a universe of playfulness and possibilities so that for a few moments a bed may become a spaceship; a runner turns into a racetrack; the serum carriers that accompany hospitalized patients can be wands of superpowers; or even being discharged from a hospital turns into a grand planned escape.