This 28th edition of the Nascente USP, once again marks the iniciative of the Pró-Reitoria de Cultura e Extensão of the University of São Paulo. Since the creation of this contest in 1990, it has demonstrated the expressive potential of our USP students in all areas of knowledge.
One of the purposes of the Nascente USP is to create opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to show their talents, adding value to their trajectory through the public recognition of their artistic and cultural work.
Welcome to Nascente USP 2021! Come reveal your artistic, cultural gifts and talents in the categories: Performing Arts; Visual Arts; Audiovisual; Design; Classical Music; Popular Music; and Text.
The Nascente I Project (1991) had the participation of several renowned artists in its first Award Party, among them Chico Buarque stood out, and gave the award to Marco Tsuyama Cardoso and Mario Lima Neto, the first winners of Popular Music section.I believe it would not be an exaggeration to say that, more than a cultural project, Nascente was the realization of a dream: the University has made visible what students can do in seven artistic areas.
A beautiful dream that opposes the nightmare images that the University, in Brazil today, has to deal with in its waking moments. Nightmares translated by inertia, neglect, the surrender to paralyzing routine, pessimism, and disbelief. Against all this, Nascente has been dreamt.
An unequivocal demonstration of vitality, of creativity, that the University is more than the bureaucratic voices that don’t believe in culture because they only intone sameness and conformism. This exhibition, organized by MAC, starts to make public the results obtained and make more real what, dreamed by the artists, was part of Nascente’s dream.
The University of São Paulo developed the Programa Nascente aiming to encourage artistic achievement among its students. It is an initiative of the Pró-Reitoria de Cultura e Extensão Universitária and seeks to reveal new artistic talents through a contest open to undergraduate and graduate students at USP, including students from the School of Dramatic Art at ECA.
Created in 1990, the Nascente Program aims to map and stimulate the cultural production of USP students, rewarding the artistic production in the undergraduate and graduate levels. It was idealized during the administration of professor João Alexandre Barbosa, inspired by professor Ana Mae Barbosa, former director of USP’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC).
Nascente USP creator, Professor João Alexandre Barbosa
“But I had to create new projects, and I created the one that to this day is the apple of my eye, the Nascente Program, born from a challenge that a student made in a meeting of the Council of Culture and Extension. He told me that the University had never helped students who had some artistic gift, to which I replied that he was right, and that we were going to change that.”
In April 2011, journalist Patrícia Ogando, from Jornal do Campus, did a story about the visibility and promotion that USP’s art contest provides, and interviewed artists who are now established.
The transcription follows bellow:
One has won the Jabuti Award for Novel and Book of the Year, the other has acted in films such as “My name is not Johnny” and “Carandiru”. They are José Roberto Torero and Luís Miranda, former USP students and winners of the first editions of the USP’s Pró-reitoria de Cultura e Extensão Universitária (PRCEU) Nascente Program.
José Roberto Torero photo: Grupo Cia das Letras
These names exemplify the relative success of the program. Torero, who studied Journalism and Literature at USP, won the second edition of Nascente with the draft of Galantes Memórias e Admiráveis Aventuras do Virtuoso Conselheiro Gomes, o Chalaça, a book that would win the most important literature award in the country, the Jabuti, in 1995. Luís Miranda, on the other hand, was a student at ECA’s School of Dramatic Art and won the first edition, in 1990, with the dance spectacle Eguns. At the time, Luís won the equivalent of five thousand dollars.
For the actor, the award was indispensable in economic terms and helped him ascend. “Imagine: scholarship student, from Salvador, broke. This money came in handy. It was an award that gave me a certain visibility. An actor who dances, who won a choreography award. This was very nice”, he says.
The Nascente USP , through its annual awards, seeks to recognize actors, poets, musicians, painters, directors, writers, composers, designers, sculptors or filmmakers of great quality in the universe of young people who daily circulate through the various institutes and faculties of the University.
In the 2013 edition, Nascente USP’s production spread giant student cards throughout all campuses in order to increase its reach. The success was so great that we got 547 entries, the 5th highest mark in 28 years of history.
In 2003, an Academic Commission was set up to improve the guidelines that have lead the project, in addition to monitoring its implementation. Under the coordination of professor Maria Cecília França Lourenço, the Commission is integrated by the directors of PRCEU’s departments. Since then, the awarded areas have been performing arts, visual arts, audiovisual, design, classical music, popular music and text. In addition, starting in 2006, one of the winners was chosen to develop his art with a tutor. 
In 2016, under the then academic coordination of ECA professor Lucilene Cury, the Academic Commission decided to expand the presentations of the winners to the countryside campuses as well, whenever possible.
In 2018 the Competition underwent an identity reformulation having its name changed to Nascente USP, which suggests a more direct connection with its audience. The new academic coordinator of Nascente USP is the artist and professor of the Department of Visual Arts at ECA, Cláudio Mubarac.
Thus, Nascente continues and deepens its action, with the objective of bringing the university community closer to high-quality artistic production, stimulating reflection on art and culture as inexorable values in the formation of the individual, of society and humanity.
Of course I already knew who João Alexandre Barbosa was.
Not only because of his work, but also because I had heard Walnice Nogueira Galvão talk about him.
Well, very well, obviously.
The person who brought us together was Aloísio Falcão, another excellent figure. I had just assumed the pompous post of editorial director of Abril Publisher men’s magazines and had some crazy ideas about the magazine Superinteressante that was under the same brand.
And I asked for a talk with the professor, at Edusp.
Unforgettable conversation.
He and his inseparable pipe listened to me with due attention.
But what I would hear from him was much more interesting than my concern with Super.
João Alexandre had a project and was looking for someone to back it up.
No one better than Abril for that, he supposed.
With good reason, for a change
o jornalista Juca Kfouri foto: web
The project had a name, and it didn’t even need a last name: Nascente.
“Where is your talent?”, the project asked USP students, in the search for artistic and literary vocations, in short, in the search to reveal talents wherever they were.
Who could guarantee that there wasn’t a great opera singer in the School of Physics, for example?
Or a refined writer in Engineering?
Maybe even a violinist in the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports.
He described the project and his eyes shone like a child’s in front of a kaleidoscope.
That moved me.
I returned to Abril certain that I could not fail in the endeavor to convince my bosses that this was a project that had everything to do with the publishing house, a magnificent way to create a creative bond with the largest center of excellence in the country.
And João Alexandre’s idea was so good that I didn’t even have to use much of my non-existent sales power.
Although the only condition he had imposed was, quite rightly, that there could be no direct interference from Abril in the organization and evaluation criteria of Nascente, the publisher agreed to finance it simply by mentioning its name associated with the project.
And Nascente was born, in 1990, to become the apple of the teacher’s eye.
When someone asks me about the things I am proud to have participated in, the Nascente Program has a special place.
It is less, I admit, for the project itself, which, let’s be reasonable, was all João Alexandre’s.
It is more for having been able, for almost five years, to see up close the gleam in the boyish eyes of the old, beloved, and missed teacher.
LAST EDITION
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2017 – 2011
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2010 – 2001
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2000 – 1991
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