Carolisides

This week I took part in a two and half day workshop hosted by Zecora Ura in partnership with National Theatre Wales. Persis-Jade Maravala and Jorge Lopes Ramos are directors of the Brazil / UK company and the workshops were a focus on our own work but explored through their working methods – they call this process mini-Drift. The main focus was to deconstruct the process of why we create work as artists. The idea was to test and experiment by trying something new out in a way we had never done before. We were encouraged to lead ourselves down a path we hadn’t explored in our work and to potentially try something out that scared us. After all the warm-ups, group bonding and capoeira we got on with it. Several times a day we participated in each other’s pieces either by taking part or being an audience member. The idea was to create a risk free area where we could see if what were testing was leading in a direction were happy with. Each night we had a small presentation and had a chance to give feedback on everyone’s piece. I was so immersed in the whole experience that for the first time ever I did not take any photos or videos for a blog post!

Today, leading off from mini-Drift was an additional day BR-116 hosted by Zecora Ura and National Theatre Wales brining together the British Council, Chapter Arts Centre, freelance artists and Arts Council Wales to discuss potential collaborations between Wales and Brazil. There were 4 mini commissions and as a part of this I was asked to share my migration story of being an artist. With this we also created our collective story’s of migration and started developing collective story’s of Wales and Brazil. We heard about Transform the British Council initiative to build up projects between UK and Brazil. As of yet there is not a specific project in Wales, which means there is a big future of collaborative opportunities. Join the NTW group Brazil to Wales / Wales to Brazil to join in on the conversation, ask questions and share ideas.