Support our Performing, Visual and Martial Arts and Cultural Youth Programs in Baltimore City
Provides an hour per week day of capoeira instruction year round.
[TL;DR - CSP is looking for help to fund our after-school program which teaches capoeira, a musical martial art, various Brazilian cultural dances, as well as visual arts classes to build instruments]
Capoeira Social Project believes in education for the body, the mind, and for life. And all of this is done through the media of capoeira. BODY Education for the body, through capoeira movements, sambas and maculele, helps students stay in shape. Through training of the martial art and the dances, participants gain strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, rhythm, self awareness and self confidence. MIND Education for the mind, through music and the Portuguese language, helps students become bilingual (Bilingualism has shown to improve cognition and standardized test scores, as well as wards off dementia). Utilizing songs and presentations, students also learn about Brazilian history via the history of capoeira, which has its roots in slavery and abolition. Brazilian folk heroes and their American counterparts are covered as well. Mathematics is also a standard topic in class. It is used to describe the geometry and physics of movements. LIFE Education for life is a broad topic covered in classes and workshops. Capoeira is very philosophical as most martial arts. Mestre Pastinha once said “A capoeira é tudo que a boca come” which translates to “Capoeira is everything that the mouth eats.” This can be interpreted in many ways, but CSP chooses to see this as “capoeira can be found in everything.” Dance or fight, life is full of decisions. Through workshops on how to make the musical berimbau, pandeiro, and caxixi instruments, students learn to work with their hands. For berimbaus and caxixis they also learn about agricultural skills needed to grow the materials. Students learn how to think about and look at items to find a different purpose, eg: for caxixis and pandeiros, students learn how to up-cycle 2L soda bottles. All of these skills can be transferred to future occupational areas.
- CAPOEIRA
CSP providing a day long intensive capoeira workshop for 200 students, Pre-K through 5th grade, at Severn School in Severn, MD, USA.
- MACULELE
Our instructor Siriguejo (with tattoos) participating in a maculele presentation for grade school children in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
A few CSP students training maculele.
CSP performing maculele at the Kunta Kinte Festival in Annapolis, MD, USA.
- SAMBA DE COCO
- FREVO
OUR PROGRAMS: VISUAL ARTS
- INSTRUMENT MAKING
In this video CSP taught other capoeira teachers as well as their students how to make a berimbau, the principle instrument of capoeira, using traditional methods.
In this video CSP taught youths how to make a caxixi, a seed filled basket woven shaker instrument. In the video we can see that even when students do not successfully create the instrument they were able to apply a positive mental attitude and ended the course with a woven bowl.
- PAPER MACHE
- PYROGRAPHY
- SCREENPRINTING