José Branco

Current occupation

Free-lance non-formal educator

Work experience

Co-Founded Ha Moment cooperative in 2016 with the intention of creating non-formal education methodologies in collaboration with other national and international institutions and partners. During 5 years I co-created many NFE activities for youth and youth workers that were facilitated at local and national level and in Europe, these last connected to the Erasmus+ programme. This personal and professional development exceeded my initial expectations.

Since 2016 trained in 15-20 international projects on different topics under the umbrella of Mental Health, Artistic Expression, Empathy and Conflict Management.

During 2017-2019 took part in the pilot project Orçamento Participativo Jovem (Public Youth Budget), implemented in 12 high schools with the purpose of introducing the topic of Participative Democracy by stimulating active participation and self-interest and having a budget committed to the improvement of community and school. Open for suggestion, with different stages of public debates, the most voted by the student community gets sponsored. Occasionally general assemblies would take place with over 200 youngsters and youth workers from all different schools.

Since 2014 have been regularly rehearsing and performing inspired by the theatrical methodology of Theatre of the Oppressed with the theatre group Lupa Grupo de Teatro, to different community based audiences and schools.

During the school year of 2022/2023 I’m teaching the extracurricular activity Theatre and Body Expression for nine groups of 6 to 7 years old. 120 children in total.

Since 2016 I’ve been doing acting and sociocultural facilitation and team building activities for corporation groups that can go from 20 up to 300 people.

In 2019 co-facilitated a full-day event for a big corporation that included bicycle trekking, building painting and cooperative cooking for a group of 280 people.

In 2018 collaborated with SPOT Games, a startup developing educational live and online games for students with special needs at an early age, through gamifying the classroom. During this process I had to support second-grade learners to enhance their capabilities through game-based learning activities.

From June 2014 until September 2016 co-created a english-speaking storytelling group performance that took place in Lisbon that took place around 50 occasions having 20-30 attendants per session.

In 2016 and for one semester, I taugh ‘Dramatic Expression’ at EPAR professional school.