Aalborg Karneval is an organisation who plans and produces 3 carnival events each year within a duration of 2 weeks. Aalborg Carnival delivers Northern Europe’s biggest carnival parade with up to 90,000 participants.

Our contribution to the Liberty EU programme revolves around development and production of procession theatre as a part of our International Parade. A depiction of the notion of liberty within a carnival experience. The sense of releasing restrictions, forgetting everyday life, and allowing colors to explode – all related to carnival traditions from all over the world. With a wish to depict and contain these different notions we created a procession theatre piece where a float moved through our parade in the city center of Aalborg. Developing this piece entailed fantastic experiences for our organization both locally and internationally. It has developed us as an organization who has gained valuable knowledge of producing our own theatre piece. Knowledge gained both through artistic discussions and sharing with our project partners and through the experience of producing a procession piece.

The project engaged a young local graffiti artist in decorating the visual expression of the float and thereby underlining the shift between the monotonous every day and the colorful explosion of the carnival. Furthermore, the project allowed us to build further on our yearlong collaboration with Mandinga. Artistic director Charles Gimpel Beauchamp and choreographer Anna Alvarez was artistic lead on the procession. Liberty project enabled us to invite students to partake in workshops and a performance led by Mandinga. Enabling us to create spaces for a group of young people to experience creative processes and gain knowledge of physical and bodily expression.

Liberty EU is Co-Funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.