Brazil 2027

Educational and Cultural Exchange Trips to Brazil

2027 / 2028

November 2027 - Palmares, Alagoas

January 2028  Salvador, Bahia

The Story of this Trip

Since the 1970’s Louisa County Virginia intentional communities have been a viable alternative lifestyle option for hundreds of people. Key parts are rural homesteading, subsistence living and ecovillage community structure. 

Brazil has grassroots organizing tools and cultural practices that can greatly benefit the intentional communities movement in North America. Brazil’s proletarian movements are innovative with successes in equitable redistribution of land resources and restorative justices practices. The Quilombos movement (with over 400 years of history as networks and villages of African peoples in northern Brazil) formed fruitful systems of collaboration, labor and commerce.

Our exchange team feels well positioned to bridge Brazil and Virginia. We lead with the cultural sensitivity to appropriately source traditional farming practices and resistance culture practices. Our goal is to create contemporary frameworks useful to American campaigns of equity and justice, and sustainable living practices.

Central Virginia hosts annual conferences focused on sustainable living and social justice. Through these events we plan to spread the knowledge we return with to benefit thousands of people trying their best to live better and more conscientious lives. 

Wisdoms of the African diaspora: 

Applying Afro-Brazilian arts, culture and political practice  into the American movement for racial justice and decolonization

Liberation Arts is a collective focusing on spreading the culture of the many different arts of the African Diaspora. Liberation Arts works to bring the culture of circle and song, as well as ritual and ceremony, into modern community. We are adapting the ancient wisdom of circles to connect with each other today and build a new culture where expressive arts are woven into our daily practices. Through practice and praxis Liberation Arts provides cultural leadership for the development of modern day kilombos.

Liberation Arts is organizing a trip to Brazil in January for a group of Americans interested in learning firsthand about the expressive arts, cultural practices and political framework hailing from the legacy of the African diaspora in Brazil. The goal of this trip is to have a meaningful exchange with allied communities in Brazil, and to spread these practices and wisdoms in an American context as a way to ground the struggle against white supremacy in cultural practice. Our focus will be on:

1. Capoeira and other cultural and artistic practices of the African diaspora 

2. The Quilombos Movement

3.  The MST and the movement for food sovereignty, especially for landless  people of color 

In addition,  Liberation Arts is organizing a World Cultures Conference in our communities in Louisa, VA in July 2023. During this trip we are hoping to strengthen connections with sister organizations so we can have representation from these organizations at our World Cultures Conferences. Again the goal here is to spread the wisdom of Afro-Brazilian arts and cultural practices and political frameworks to people struggling for racial justice and cultural decolonization.