Activism - Assis, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Festival

It's not just a gig, its a growing idea, later I will create a blog just to expose that project and I am thinking about of making a V/A to make money to invest in this project. I could use help from bands in other countries that would like to take part.


A little about the project:

We squatted a school, it belonged to the catholic church but then it was bought by some rich guy and, I don't know what happened, it was abandoned for more than 10 years. Some guys from a "Samba School" got the right to use that space to store their stuff, and the building is under their responsibility. This city has no place for young people (besides malls and some other places for rich people), and there is no skate park and no place where we can get together to make a gig or something (there is a rock bar, but its veeery small). Those guys from the samba school invited the skaters to skate there, and it become a spot for the youth, and there are all kinds of kids hanging out there.


Have you ever heard about brazilian carnival? Those samba schools are like the carnival blocks, there are some really rich schools, mostly envolved with drug trafficking and illegal games (casinos and stuff are prohibited here), but this school here is very modest and the guys that are taking care of the building are over 50 years old and haven't got any payments to make, they just have a garden where they plant some stuff to eat (which is a kind of community garden, everyone can get greens there).


I got involved with that project and we are buying some power cables to get eletricity in the place and we are cleaning and revitalizing. We are building a skate park too there, we have already made a lot of obstacles. Those guys from the samba school are very experienced musicians and they want to make a project to give free music classes to the kids, they made their own musical instruments too, it's a very DIY, autonomous and multicultural project and the space we got is wonderful.


To get ready for the gig a lot of people were helping to clean the place, my hand is full of calluses hehehe.

Two Skate Shops helped us with the sound system and some energy cables (we don't have money to rent that stuff) and they gave some awards to the best skaters.