Alongside other institutes and faculties dedicated to the humanities, the presence of the Institute of Arts at Unicamp (I.A.), which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020, emphasises the importance of art and culture for the university. In the same way, the intellectual and poetic production of the I.A.'s faculty of teachers-artists-researchers has helped to ensure that the university atmosphere can reach and aesthetically involve a large number of people who, in flux, interact daily in its spaces and activities.

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In a similar way to the contemporary city, art manifestations at the university find shelter and a structure for dissemination in spontaneous actions or in activities supported by galleries, museums, study centres and public calls that confirm the strong conviction about the importance of policies for promoting culture, in a constant and sequenced way, through actions linked or not to the institution's significant collections. This means expanding audiences’ development and involvement in valorising of the university's artistic and cultural heritage.

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The model to sectorise spatially the knowledge areas located in the master plan of university campuses, such as the one applied by Unicamp, defies the consolidation of the universality of knowledge that guides the original concept of this sort of institution.

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This is how we can understand the challenges and importance of projects such as the Sculpture and Conviviality Garden which, in the face of these divided spatial organisation models, are established in the interstitial and open spaces of the campus, driven by the mission to produce the desired intersection between art and interaction that potentially brings together permanent collections, artistic actions and belonging between people from the various communities.

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In general, sculpture gardens are urban structures made up of artistic collections, most commonly located in public parks, which house a wide range of sculptural pieces and historical and celebratory monuments, as well as performances or contemporary artistic actions from the most diverse areas of artistic expression. The garden as an art collection is also present under various names in Brazilian public universities, as we can recognise in the projects developed by USP, UFMG, UFRJ, among other universities in the country.