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Delegates from Brazil visiting the UK in April. Cafe Art will join the UK delegation in Sao Paulo and Rio after the week-long pilot photography contest. Photo: Matt Priestley.
We are excited to announce that the first international pilot of Cafe Art’s photography contest and calendar is happening in São Paulo next week, to be called Minha São Paulo.
Following the success of a visit by a delegation to London in April this year, Cafe Art was invited to join a UK delegation with the organisation With One Voice in November, and the contest was added later.
The São Paulo city council (the prefeitura) asked if Cafe Art could do a pilot photography contest like the My London project and Paul Ryan will fly to São Paulo on Sunday 1 November a week before the rest of the UK delegation.
We are very excited to not only be included in the With One Voice delegation but to also pilot our photography contest, exhibition and calendar in São Paulo. Following the success of our Kickstarter this year Cafe Art has been inundated with requests for advice on running photography contests and calendars and we are working with many people from cities all over the world. This pilot will be really helpful to the overall project after three years of running it in London.
FujiFilm Brazil have generously donated 100 cameras for the pilot and we have a local member of The Royal Photographic Society helping with the photography training before we hand out the cameras on Tuesday next week.
The pilot will be like the London project: participants will be given the cameras and told to take them away and photograph their city over two days. The cameras will be collected on Thursday 5 November and after developing the film the judges will choose 20 photos for the exhibition on Saturday, with the voting happening the following week.
We are very grateful to Carter Wong Design who will be doing the graphic design in London – before the 2016 Minha São Paulo calendar is printed and sold at the São Paulo Human Rights Festival in December. (If anyone is interested in ordering a copy of the São Paulo calendar please email paul@cafeart.org.uk)
The With One Voice Project
With One Voice have been working in Brazil with the arts and homelessness sector leading up to (and beyond) the Rio 2016 Olympics. This project follows on from the With One Voice project run during London 2012, featuring a showcase of artistic achievement by 300 musicians, actors, filmmakers and rappers who had experience of homelessness.
Collaborating with the People’s Palace Projects, With One Voice wrote a joint research paper about the need for a project in Brazil. Wherever they went, they met officials, homeless centre staff in the statutory and not-for-profit sector, artists and countless people for whom the street is their home, who all passionately support the use of the arts. The same comment came up time and again: the arts are vital because they restore dignity.
The project With One Voice have set up together with the Brazilians focuses on building the capacity of the arts and homelessness sector in Rio and São Paulo and strengthening networks. In order to achieve this, they have been organising exchanges with groups from the UK during 2015 and 2016.
The Cafe Art Minha São Paulo (My São Paulo) project is in addition to the official With One Project and we are very grateful to not only be asked to join the main project but to have the chance to run the photography contest in Brazil.
