Mandinga Arts visit Aalborg Karneval

In March 2022, we had the pleasure of hosting Charles Beauchamp, artistic director of Mandinga Arts, on a research visit in Aalborg. ​Mandinga Arts researches, designs, creates and delivers extraordinary and innovative outdoor performance costumes, puppets and processions across Europe and have partnered with other LIBERTY EU partners on previous projects.

Charles as the artistic director is guiding the float design that we create as part of the LIBERTY EU programme. We hope that the carnival float will tour to many locations once the build has been completed.

We took Charles to visit a local school, Hasseris Gymnasium, and spoke to a group of students about being part of the performance around the LIBERTY EU float. These participants will develop a performance through a series of creative workshops in May ahead of our bug Carnival this year.

Together we explored Mandinga’s costumes and shared creative ideas. We explored the notion of liberty and what it means to the students and other young people today. We also explored examples around the world where people suffer from restricted liberty. It was a great learning and sharing-knowledge experience for all involved and the beginnings of a creative group that will perform with us soon.

As you can see on the pictures, Charles brought some props and costumes for the students to see, feel and sense how the performance will slowly start to develop both around building the float and through creating the costumes and the choreography into a whole.

We are very excited to be continuing our work with the students and Charles and the rest of Mandinga’s crew! Things are evolving, developing and growing fast at the moment and we are very excited to share the process with you!