The Unified Educational Centres (CEUs) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, have been an important intersectorial public policy with continuity throughout different administrations since its inauguration in 2003 that aims the promotion of public spaces in the periphery, reducing criminality and social exclusion. According to several studies about the effects of the implementation of CEUs, they take an important part in the rearrangement of the urban fabric.

Our collective action research is held at one of the 46 CEUs of São Paulo, CEU Uirapuru, in order to analyse the production of this space, its surroundings and its architecture, as well as the modes of interaction with local communities. The interdisciplinary and collaborative research, in an attempt of dialogue between areas of pedagogy, psychology, architecture, geography and environmental education, focuses on the following aspects: space, architecture and school organization; forms of appropriation and signification by the communities - uses and memories. Our work is divided into three subgroups: Memory and Education; Architecture; and Environmental Education. With this investigation and intervention, we intend to promote more inclusive school and cultural practices, to foster the culture of participation and citizenship and to contribute to increasing quality education, considering the importance of the defense of this policy at the present moment, when serious threats to its public and intersectorial character have been occurring.

In our analysis of CEU Uirapuru, we try to bring to discussion the importance of concepts such as space, place and territory, as well as appropriation, culture and history. We consider the analysis of authors such as Escolano (2001), about the importance of considering the location and disposition of schools in the urban plot of the cities, as an element of the curriculum, in taking into account the problems we have to face in Brazilian schools. According to Faria (2012), the conception of education that underlies their architecture has not managed to enter the 21st century and the classroom is still seen as the central place of knowledge production. But we would mainly mention the poor quality of buildings of public schools, from the 1960s on, when there were growing in school demand, showing the little importance given to education for popular classes (Lima, 1994). From the 1980s, a new conception in terms of school environment emerged and many proposals for renewal were made in some Brazilian states, according to Braga (2008). In attempts such as CEUs, we consider the importance of architectural complex as a place of social, cultural and symbolic dimension, as well as the importance of the social relationships established there in the constitution of the subjects. To do so, the study is based on the concepts of mediation (Vygotsky, 1995) and appropriation (Wertsch, 1994; Smolka, 2000) as well as on ideas developed by Daniels et al. (2015) about of the architectural design and its appropriation by the school staff for the students' learning. Haesbaert (2011), in dialogue with Lefebvre (2006), states that every identity is spatial, due to the fact that it is not performed in an abstract way, but contextualized in space-time, geographically, historically and symbolically perceived / lived. In this sense, the research deals with memories of the agents of CEU, and how they compose the daily life and the relationships with the space and of the subjects among themselves, based on authors such as Halbwachs (1990), Pollak (1992), Bosi (1994), among others.

The research has been carried out according to a qualitative, collaborative, action-research approach. To this end, a study of the environment is being conducted, with attention to the microprocesses involved in social and individual actions (Marques, 2016), to meanings that subjects attribute to spaces and to experiences in them, trying to make a "dense description" (Geertz, 1978) and document the undocumented in their history (Ezpeleta and Rockwell, 1986), such as conflicts and meanings produced and not necessarily explicit in everyday relations. This process will take the form of "action research", with the emancipation of the subjects involved, the development of critical-reflexive procedures on reality and collective re-signification of the groups' understandings (Franco, 2005). Moreover, in a collaborative approach, the subject in the researched environment comes to be seen as a partner for the research, as a participant in the research process (Ibiapina, 2008). To this extent, special attention is given to the stories and other types of documents capable of reporting on the interactions between numerous agents, from their everyday uses to those related to the insertion of the equipment in dimensions or situations that go beyond the scale of the neighbourhood. The aim is to offer social and historical visibility to public policy agents who are generally neglected in the documents that support the policies. By doing so, it becomes possible to recognize the series of actions and representations that contribute to the configuration and materialization of public policies that, although they are not usually transformed into statistical data, they are central to the effectiveness and success of actions of this nature. Mapping these actions becomes, therefore, a fundamental strategy for investigating the impact of CEU in people's lives in the communities. The subjective, affective and material marks will allow us to conclude about the constitution (or not) of this space as a place for the subjects that relate to it. Through procedures such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews, locus for the emergence of narratives of life and experience (Bertaux, 2010) will be created, such as discussion circles with the community; in addition to walks through the neighborhood, guided by the residents, accompanied by field recording.

As this is an ongoing research, what we could observe and at the same time collaborate in, so far, are initiatives such as: projects carried out by the school community itself, related to sustainability, such the planting of several species of trees; functioning of collegiate and management council formed by residents and local leaders, in addition to representatives of the school community; cultural initiatives involving music, theatre, reading; sports and healthy practices for students and communities; pedagogical work aiming at a greater participation of families in the school and the growth of the feeling of belonging to CEU, to the schools and to the communities themselves; activities in the schools and in the library around the themes of inclusion, afro and indigenous culture. Even in the year 2023, the special action plans of the schools will focus on ethnic-racial issues and we intend to hold several cultural workshops involving professionals from the university, local communities and CEU itself, so that practices and conceptions towards greater diversity and inclusion can be discussed and rethought. Our observation, interviews, training activities with the teachers will be in the sense of building together with the agents of this space possibilities of its renovation and expansion of affective, educational and citizen use. The patron of Brazilian education, Paulo Freire (1996), brings, in his conception of socio-cultural and critical-humanizing education, elements to understand how the subject as a historical being that, from social relations, can interact with the world and with other human beings, as well as perceiving himself as in constant construction. We believe that this Brazilian experience can dialogue with European experiences that aim at the increment of policies for childhood and youth in areas of great vulnerability such as the researched territory.

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