The Samba School: The Ultimate Maker Community

• In Event: Cultural Making: Practices, Priorities, and Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: Samba schools are foundational elements of Brazilian culture. Every year, Brazilian cities witness parades of unparalleled complexity, composed of thousands of dancers and musicians, a dozen or more motorized floats carrying tens of dancers, elaborate costumes, in perfect musical synchrony, all in the service of a fierce competition often decided by one or two percentage points. However, despite the fact that accomplishing these goals requires extensive learning and despite Papert’s (1980) recognition of their unusual role as learning societies, samba schools have largely gone unstudied as learning organizations.

Theoretical framework: We apply Coupaye’s (2013) concept of operational chain, a well-known method within anthropology, to education research on learning in interaction with and through production of material objects. The operational chain technique allows the construction of a sequence of processes - each with its own sub-processes - that contribute to the artifact’s final form and function. In this case, we study processes of learning to prepare, design, and construct a samba school’s carnival presentation.

Data sources & methods: This research is based on a qualitative field study, specifically an ethnography of one samba school in São Paulo, Brazil, called Grêmio Recreativo Cultural Social Escola de Samba Unidos de Vila Maria or simply Unidos de Vila Maria. Participants from among the Vila Maria membership include the school president, the carnivalesque (or creative director), the float manager, the production administrator, 5 craftsmen, 5 costume designers, and a number of seamstresses and other participants who wished to remain unidentified. Data sources include interview recordings, field notes, and photographs.

Results: Two primary findings emerged. First, for the modality of making evident in samba schools - that is, as part of a fierce competition with both a novice and highly professionalized workforce - the criteria for external assessment significantly change the nature of local practices. For example, Rio de Janeiro’s additive evaluation structure - with points earned for the number and complexity of elements present - results in much more elaborate decoration than does São Paulo’s deductive structure, in which simple, sturdy designs are seen as the best way to avoid losing points for missing or broken elements. Second, looking at the operational chain for carnival preparation, we found unusually creative combinations of high and low technology practices. To create the highly sculpted floats, for example, designers combine 3D design software with decades-old projection technology to carve giant foam blocks into 2-3 story tall figures. In effect, these craftspeople use and subvert technologies to create what is essentially a large-scale CNC sculpting practice that combines human and digital tools and capabilities. This is but one example of the ways samba school members creatively combine different technologies to achieve their collective goals.

Scholarly significance: Makerspaces are often depicted as high tech spaces that enable new, complex, creative endeavors. In samba schools, we find decades-old, highly distributed, and completely informal practices where people are constantly pushing the boundaries of making by innovatively mixing high and low tech, typically working against resource constraints. These new instantiation of making could inform equity-oriented K-12 environments.

Authors

• Eliton Meireles de Moura
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jose Armando Valente
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paulo Blikstein, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author