Paidéia would like to invite you to get to know more about the IX Paidéia International Theater Festival for Children and Young People: A Window to Utopia. This year the Festival is experiencing financial difficulties.
Brazil is passing through a crisis that also affects the cultural budget. During the entire last year, we have tried to obtain funding for our festival writing projects for state grants, having however obtained no support from the government. This year is being very difficult to Paidéia – we did not receive any grant for projects applied.
We would like to ask you to spread the news and ask people to contribute.
If you want to contribute, you can click here: http://www.kickante.com.br/campanhas/uma-janela-para-utopia
If you want to know more on how to contribute from abroad, click here:
http://www.kickante.com.br/bau-de-ideias/como-funciona-crowdfunding/how-to-contribute-from-abroad
A WINDOW TO UTOPIA
Cia Paidéia would like to bring up some matters which have caused us concern in the last years, which we would like to become of public knowledge for all those involved with the project.
We are now in the ninth edition of our Paidéia International Theater Festival for Children and Young People: A Window to Utopia. Throughout all these years, we have felt an immense proud of being able to offer to our audiences, to artists, teachers, friends and specially children and young people, plays of the highest quality, which speak to children and young people with their subjects, language and characters. We strive for an art capable of entering in contact with the emotion and the intelligence of children, never taking them lightly or simplifying fundamental questions of their formation as humans. For years, we have researched and brought to the festival groups, from Brazil and abroad, known for their consistent work and concerned with deepening the dialogue with this audience.
Along these nine years, we have created and developed exchanges; have been recognized by many countries and institutions as a theater group of great artistic value, accompanied by an earnest and respectful work towards the childhood. Every year, new groups and consulates enter in contact with us and bring plays to this festival; in 2015, there will be groups and invitees from Turkey, Denmark, Germany and São Paulo, along with the presence of members from ASSITEJ (International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People).
During the entire last year, we have tried to obtain funding for our festival, writing projects for state grants, having however obtained no support from the government. We are still waiting for the state approval of the PROAC ICMS grant; after this, a tax waiver process must be made from a company, and this entire process is very unlikely to happen before the festival.
In some editions of the festival, we received private financial support, which allowed our festival to happen; we are immensely grateful to these institutions. As main partners, we have Goethe Institute, which has believed in the festival and given it yearly support; SESC Santo Amaro, whose support has been always in change, and, as of now, conditions its expense to the same proportion of Paidéia’s, varying to its yearly conditions. Mahle and ABT foundations have also endorsed many editions of the festival, but were not able to make it in 2015.
In spite of every economical challenge, we have never given up making the festival, year after year, because we believe in its importance, and in the necessity of broadening and deepening the debate on theater for children in the city of São Paulo and in Brazil. In order to achieve this, many times the producers, artists and festival crew have worked on an entirely volunteer basis.
Cia. Paidéia spends months of work in every field of the production and pre-production of the festival, not only in the days in which the festival occurs. We have always done it and will continue to do it with our hearts and joy, doing whatever is necessary to bring the best theater of the world to our children. We are backed up by important international groups and institutions, which believe in the work of Paidéia; and many Brazilian groups have given their plays for us as a gift, in the times in which the festival had no money to pay them.
Once again, this year we perceive how little is recognized and valued the theater for children and young people; how, after nine years of intense labor, dedication and daily struggle for the theater we believe is necessary for all children, must we face such situations, in which so basic elements such as the very food for the artists is not guaranteed.
The festival will occur with all our strengths, with all the recognition Paidéia’s work receives from groups, institutions and international government, but we must make public our fight for the best theater for children and young people. We want to state that we are launching a campaign, lasting until the first day of our festival, of support and publicity of the event. We will have texts on this in our website, will speak of it in Paidéia after the performances; and we would like to ask for the help from all those who believe in this work, and, above all, believe in the childhood.
Cia. Paidéia de Teatro
Soon the entire festival program will be available at www.paideiabrasil.com.br/index.php/en/
