A Path in Giving back to the Community
From Estrelas de Cabo Verde to Colab Dudley
I have been a community dancer/social activist in UK for almost 5 years, but my journey began over 30 years ago. I grew up in the Cape Verde island and my experience in community arts activism started at 12 years old when I auditioned to dance in our local group Estrelas de Cabo Verde(Cape Verdean stars). My childhood until I was 18 was spent dancing traditional dance at our local community centre. At Estrelas de Cabo Verde we had conditions for curiosity and experimentation. We were free to create our own dance projects, and we were deeply involved in cultural and social activism. Our creations were never solely for entertainment, we always had a purpose, whether to raise awareness on social injustice, teen pregnancy or poverty. But most importantly, we danced for our own dignity as black children, we dance to raise confidence, and to preserve the cultural heritage of the Cape Verdean people.
Our creative efforts took us to big festivals, during school holidays we were touring to: Macau, Canary Islands, Portugal, Guinea, and in between the Cape-Verdean islands. We were a small community group with big dreams, moved by the speed of love for our culture and at the speed of trust to one another. In this community we learn how to look after younger generations and the importance of cultural preservation. When we reached the age of fourteen, we had to visit schools and select groups of children to teach Cape Verdean dance as a way of preserving our heritage. The 1990s were the MTV boom, and in my island not many children wanted to learn other genres than hip hop. Traditional dance was seen as something for old people, however with patience and trust we showed them the importance of practicing and appreciating our own cultural heritage. Through this community, I’ve learned the importance of connections and the value of friendship, and I am grateful for having this experience and through it the will and capacity to impact other people’s life in the community.
By adopting the long view of change we are able to see broader patterns, learn from histories, and commit to building deeper more sustainable roots for future generations.(Lab principle)
Solidariedade Imigrante (SOLIM) — A Community for Human Solidarity
When I turned 18, I moved to Portugal to pursue my academic studies. Whilst studying a degree in International Relations and after a Post Graduation in Criminology, I volunteered at Solidariedade Immigrants (SOLIM). which is a community Centre engaged in fighting for the rights of undocumented immigrants to access social help and escape slave labor. During my 4 years as a volunteer, I taught Cape Verdean traditional dance for migrants and refugees’ children, I also helped in organising legal processes for undocumented people, and protests against racism and social injustice.
At SOLIM I saw the suffering of refugees that left families behind. I’ve learned about their desperate journey into the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe, and the struggles of Brazilian women who were trafficked to work in Portuguese night clubs. As a centre for human rights, our social responsibility was to create hope and conditions for these people to get back their dignity into the society. We did it by protesting the conditions they were living in, reporting slave labor, and creating bridges for communication between communities through cultural activities.
The Imigrarte Festival
One of the activities I was involved in, was the creation of the first Imigrarte festival. The aim was to highlight the social and cultural potential of the immigrants and refugees, and to promote dialogue between the communities. The event involved artists from different countries with a multitude of talents such as: music, dance, theatre, cinema, visual arts, photography, literature, crafts and street food. After 10 years the festival Immigrarte has become one of the biggest cultural festivals in Lisbon.
In a multicultural society where different nationalities coexist, it is important to build bridges so that they don’t get isolated from each other. Isolation can breed misunderstanding mistrust and Bridges connect us, help us, understand each other’s challenge and culture and how we can better help each other and show that we care and appreciate one another.(Swinsoce, 2014 )
Creheart CIC
When I moved to the UK I wanted to work in movement for health, so I decided to take an MSc in Dance Science. As I began to engage in creative activities, I started realising the struggles faced by the community. I was surprised to know through statistics that almost half of children in Dudley are growing up in poverty. What scared me the most was reading that criminals deliberately target the most vulnerable children, which in this country are Black and children from the immigrant community. As a mother of two immigrant black children this was terrifying. Nevertheless, through my own experience of working with children in different communities, I know that to prevent it from happening, it is important that communities strengthen relationships; it is important to create conditions for children to thrive whether is through arts or sports. However, not every parent can afford these type of activities, especially in Dudley where many are living under breadline. I created Creheart with the intention of giving the ones who cannot afford to pay for creative arts sessions, the conditions to experience them for free. I believe every child should have the same opportunity to thrive no matter what background they come from, and it is our duty as a society to look after and protect them. When a child is lost for gang members the only one to blame is the society.
Creheart Activities
We co-create spaces and experiences and through that change the way the community uses and relates to them.( Jo Orchard)
Our social responsibility at Creheart is through creative arts, to protect our children from getting involved in criminal activities, in addition to preventing loneliness and strengthen social relationships in the community. Since 2018, our activities have grown significantly from one creative dance session, to capoeira sessions, recycling, and music. The idea of including different activities in the centre came from the need for giving opportunities to children to experience other types of creativity, especially the boys who were becoming teenagers and didn’t want to engage anymore in creative dance. I had to think of other activities to keep them active, as the goal is not to create artists but to raise human beings engaged in positive relations and socially responsible. I decided to adventure into the community in search for parents with creative arts and sports skills to volunteer for the centre. To my surprise I found in Dudley High Street, a Capoeira instructor a musician, and an arts and crafts artist, who now are engaged in the community teaching the children their skills.
The Social Lab Approach - CoLab Dudley
After I started Creheart community project, I was invited to be a creative partner at CoLab Dudley. Which is a dynamic community of multidisciplinary skills weaving together creativity for a kinder, more creative and connected High Street. At the start I wasn’t familiar with the concept of social labs. My background was more community activism/creative single methodologies. For the first time I was introduced to a new working methodology. An aproach that encourages system thinking and practice, I was also introduced to the Lab principles which I have adapted to my own practice as a movement researcher. These principles have inspired me to create projects that crossed disciplines, interchanging my roles between: movement researcher, and social activist, in addition to work alongside with my community creating projects that aimed to explore dance as a socio-cultural process of change, to raise awareness on climate change and to improve mental wellbeing.
Decteriorism: a mindset for shared learning a way of being curious in the world, of paying attention to patterns in data from a wide range of sources. Decteriorism explores ways to reveal and respect our collective insights to help inform our experiment designs and actions for a kinder more creative and connected high street.(Lab terminolgy)
Projects at Dudley CoLab
1- Nature Walks
One of the projects I have weaved in the lab was the nature walks. The aim was to tackle issues such as loneliness in the black community during the pandemic. With the lockdown the struggle in my community was real, especially for the children that had to stay home alone whilst parents were working 12 hours shifts. I organised the walks when we came out of lockdown, the main goal was to connect the community with nature, as a way of letting go of the pain that the pandemic has caused, in addition for the children to breathe out of lockdown with hope that better days would come. This coincided with me starting an MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, studying Laban movement and reading “How to be an Explorer of the World” suggested by one of our Lab team member Jo Orchard. Through the learning of Laban movement analyses, and the book I had my Eureka “movement.” The idea of creating a choreographic piece based on nature exploration and Laban movement analyses.
2 . The healing spirits of the woods : Joining The Dots
Haw to be an explorer of the world
How to be an explorer of the world is compendium of 59 ideas for how to get creative engaging with everyday objects and your surroundings. From mapping found sounds to learning the language of the trees turning time observation into arts. (Popova, 2020)
Laban Movement Analyses
Laban invented the system of dance notation, known as labonation or kinetography. He was the first person to develop community dance and he has set out to reform the role of dance education, emphasising his belief that dance should be available for everyone (Dunlop, 2020) Laban movement analyses is a method to observe, describe, notate and interpret human movement. It consists in several components, such as: the body component that deals with motion, the space component that describes trajectory, the shape component which is a set of qualities emerged from body and space, and effort the dynamic for understanding characteristics of movement in respect to inner intention. (Dias, 2020, pg 192)
“From things being separated and isolated from wholes, to connection and continuity”(lab principle)
With guidance on labonation, nature exploration, and the use of visualisation, the children started creating their own piece, which they named “The Healing spirits of the Woods.” During the walks we took pictures of shapes, colours, we collected stones leaves, and twigs to create 8 different movements and we create flow. Based on Laban’s spaces, effort, time, shapes, we put them together to create a phrase and through visualisation we create a story character about the spirits of the woods that came to heal us from the pandemic.
Rather than see nature as separate from us a resource to be used indiscriminately.(lab principle)
4- The Journey
The journey is a research piece created for the Black history month, which the aim was to raise awareness on race inequality and violence against black people. It involved the combinations of different disciplines, to create something that crossed boundaries of identities, with the provocative intention of protesting against racial oppression.
Black dance studies sit at the intersection of dance and black studies two disciplines that demand we contend with difficult archives. We dance we believe, and we wonder at its effects and affects. We seek to open space for unusual and particular studies of how black dance in foundational and nurturing to black corporeality. (Franz& Willis, 2016, pg1)
(more about the piece at https://medium.com/colab-dudley/the-journey-i-e5464bb941be)
Different Approaches for a Common Goal
My practice started outside institutions with the intention of creating projects for the benefit of the community. Through the social Lab experience I’ve learned other methodologies for solving complex problems, that requires a different more systemic approach. Nevertheless social lab and community centre common goals are the one of improving economic health and the quality of its social bonds. A study conducted by Dr. Felton Earls, found that the single most important factor differentiating levels of health from one neighbourhood to another was the so-called collective efficacy, the capacity of people coming together on matters of common interest. When people come together in creation and celebration, they develop their social capital by cooperating, and finding shared goals. Community spaces are essential for promoting constructive interactions, and as important is the space, so is a piece of art or event that can be created. A carnival may be just a colourful parade of a group of artists, or it may be the result of a community process involving hundreds of people brainstorming, building creating and marching together with families and friends. Creating this kind of connection in communities might be challenging but it is an essential ingredient for communities to thrive in a global society.
