With one year to go before the Rio 2016 olympics, we have an announcement to make, and would appreciate help in sharing it with as many people as possible:

The main objective of the Favela Brass project for the next 12 months is to perform at the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics

Here are 5 reasons why we think that our children deserve a shot:

1. To prepare for and play at the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 olympics would be an incredible experience for the children and provide an excellent focus for the project.
2. Olympic opening ceremonies represent and reflect the best all sections of a city’s society. Our children would be excellent ambassadors for the favelas of Santa Teresa.
3. Favela Brass is a music school for Brazilian children, founded by a British musician in the time between the London 2012 Olympics and Rio 2016 and funded in large part by donations in the UK. In this way it provides a bridge between the two games.
4. FB represents something innovative and new that is happening in Rio. We are mixing Rio’s percussion tradition with New Orleans’ brass tradition to create a style all of our own.
5. The exposure that playing at the opening ceremony would generate for us would raise the profile of the project, helping us to continue our work into the future.

Our strategy for getting ourselves included in the opening ceremony is to:

• Publicize the project and our desire to participate, through regular public performances, our own events and a series of short documentary videos about our journey on social media, all brought together under the #FavelaBrass2016 hasthag, and
• Try to establish direct contact with the artistic directors, organizers and sponsors of the opening ceremony.

For the reasons outlined above we think our children deserve a shot, however we are under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead. This is an extremely ambitious goal for such a new project, which will take serious amounts of planning, a lot of hard work and more than a pinch of good luck. If anyone out there thinks they can help us, please get in touch.