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VIVA Carnival Club: Alegria Samba School

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Unlimited International Unlimited gives money to disabled artists to make some great art work.

Shape Arts and Artsadmin run the Unlimited programme.

Unlimited gets its funding from:

• Arts Council England

• Arts Council Wales

• The British Council

• Spirit of 2012

In 2016 Unlimited was able to give some money to disabled artists who did not live in the UK.

This document is about one of these projects.

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Carnival company

Alegria Samba School

The Alegria Samba School is a partnership of people and organisations working in carnival arts.

The partnership is made up of disabled people and non-disabled people.

The organisations are:

• VIVA (Valuing Individuals, Valuing All) which is a project of the New Carnival Company from Isle of wight, England.

VIVA is a carnival club for disabled and non disabled adults.

• Ambassadors of Happiness. This is a group of disabled and non-disabled carnival company from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

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Other organisations that were involved were:

• Emergency Exit Arts from London England. Emergency Exit Arts is an arts organisation that works with people who find it hard to get involved in projects

• Brouhaha from Liverpool in England. Brouhaha is a community arts company that is committed to involving more people in the arts

• C.RE.A Cooperative from Viareggio in Italy. C.RE.A is a community arts organisation that works with disabled and older people

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Carnival arts are many different creative activities that together make carnivals like the ones in Brazil.

This includes:

• The Music

• The Dance

• The Costumes

Alegria means ‘Joy’ in Portuguese - the language of Brazil.

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What happened Trip to Brazil August 2017 The VIVA Carnival Club and The New Carnival Company went to Brazil in August 2017 to work with the Ambassadors of Happiness.

They learnt how to organise a Samba School.

Samba is a type of dance and music that is popular in Brazil.

A Samba School is a large group of drummers and dancers who play Samba music.

Together they worked on a project called ‘Mata Atlantic – A Cry for Salvation, Mata Atlantica – Responsibility of Every Nation’.

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January 2018 In January people from Ambassadors of Happiness came to the Isle of Wight, UK and shared their skills with VIVA, Emergency Exit Arts and Brouhaha.

They shared their skills in:

• Making Costumes

• Dancing

• Samba Drumming

The dancers learnt about the different roles and certain important characters in traditional Carnival Dancing.

The UK companies took away traditional Brazilian carnival costumes so they could make more back home.

Together they made the Alegria Samba School.

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BRITAIN'S BIGGEST ONE DAY CARNIVAL

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Going on tour The Alegria Samba School showed off their work at:

• The Luton International Carnival

• Mardi Gras Isle of Wight

• Newham International Carnival

• Southbank Centre Unlimited Festival

They also showed off their work in Viareggio in Italy.

They ran workshops in costume making, dancing and samba drumming with C.RE.A Co-operative.

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What worked well? What was learnt?

Many things worked well including:

• The groups learnt a lot about how to make the costumes, how to do the dancing and how to do the drumming

• Everyone was able to get involved

• People learnt how to make the costumes in a way that they could be worn again and again by different people

• Many people were involved in each event. Thousands of people saw the events

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• The people who saw the events really enjoyed them, especially as there were disabled and non-disabled people working together

• It will be easy to build on these events in the future

• VIVA and Ambassadors of Happiness plan to work together in the future

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Some things could improve in the future including:

• Some disabled people found it hard to take part in the performances because they were quite quick and went on for a long time

• There could be more ways for disabled people to understand the performances they were watching

• It has been hard to organise events which involve such a lot of people

• There have been difficulties working with people who speak different languages

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What can others learn from this?

This project shows that:

• Involving lots of different people is an important part of Carnival

• People really enjoyed working in a group made up of disabled and non-disabled people

• It is important to understand each individual’s needs when you are organising projects

• It is important that everyone can access the events

• Working with people from the different countries helped to understand more about things that should be done

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For more information

If you want more information about Unlimited please go to:

Web: weareunlimited.org.uk/about-unlimited

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