Art Park Inhotim

Sometimes my job takes me to unexpected places. This last week, I visited an enormous botanical garden filled with fantastical modern arts pieces. A reserve located in the middle of a mining state, Inhotim realizes the fantastic vision of artists and conservationists both. It's about an hour outside of a major city in the state and is situated in luscious rolling hills upon which sit large installations of various artists. Sounds great, right?


So, you may be a bit skeptical about how this relates to English language teaching, right? Well, the foundation that runs the park has an education project for kids from the public schools in the small town nearby. Their goal is to educate about the environment and the arts and to provide opportunities for workforce development for Inhotim and the industries nearby. With a large portion of the art coming from outside of Brazil and the fame of the institution, they have a lot of international visitors who require English not only to navigate the park but also in the support services such as hotels, restaurants, and other tourist services nearby. Many visitors and artists come from the United States and the area around Minas Gerais is a major economic engine for international agriculture, mining, engineering, and technical companies. So, we are discussing supporting the integration of English into their existing education and training programs... and I got to visit this magical place for a rainy morning during my trip to Belo Horizonte.

I wish I had taken more pictures, but it was raining while we were there. Here are a few shots that I snapped:

A bronze tree suspended in air will eventually grow into the posts you see pictured

Work by Brazilian artist Varejão in a building dedicated to her work