After the success of the first edition, in Rio de Janeiro in 2022, the Mimo para Crianças festival arrives this Saturday (21) in the municipality of Serra, in Espírito Santo. The event will last until Sunday (22) at Parque da Cidade, located on the border between Parque Residencial Laranjeiras and Valparaíso.
On the 11th and 12th of February, Mimo will be in São Francisco do Sul, the oldest city in Santa Catarina. There is no age limit for the festival’s activities, which are carried out outdoors and in spaces that value the cultural and natural heritage of the cities covered.
Totally free, the festival will have more than 50 attractions in each municipality, including shows with Mundo Bita, Lilica Rocha, Grupo Roda Gigante and singer Eriberto Leão, who will sing rock music for the children. The children’s festival will also feature theater plays and recreational workshops, addressing current issues such as sustainability and black culture. The programming in both cities can be accessed on here.
Enthusiastic about the second edition of the children’s festival, the director and creator of Mimo Festival, which originated Mimo para Crianças, Lu Araújo, said that she is anxious to see the children’s reaction to the proposal. “We have developed numerous activities so that they can play for four or five hours without picking up their cell phones or tablets. A child’s place is playing, running and having fun,” said Lu Araújo to Brazil Agency.
Over the past 20 years, the Mimo Festival has offered educational activities that stimulate creativity in cities defined as World Heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), including Olinda, Ouro Preto, Rio de Janeiro, Paraty, in Brazil, and Amarante and Porto, in Portugal. Tiradentes, Recife, São Paulo and João Pessoa have also hosted editions of the festival.
With 55 editions, two international and two national awards and an audience of more than 2 million people, which was the mark reached with Mimo Porto 2022, the Mimo Festival has already promoted more than 500 concerts and won, last year, the version for children and young people.
Inclusion
Mimo para Crianças activities are inclusive and follow the molds of the mother festival. This means that the event maintains the design of the original festival: attractions of high artistic quality, offered free of charge, with concerts and circus and theater shows. Workshops encourage the children’s culture of building kites, the art of gastronomy, recreational activities and even the ups and downs of the Parkour are part of the children’s edition, as well as storytelling and recreational activities.
Lu Araújo recalled that the debut of Mimo para Crianças, in the summer of 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, brought together countless families, who vibrated and interacted with the attractions. Children, young people and adults filled all spaces, carefully chosen in different regions of the city.
“The first children’s edition represented a breath of joy and a real relief for the population, which circulated freely between attractions, playing, singing and dancing. After all, we were starting to leave behind the long isolation we were subjected to due to the covid-19 pandemic. There were more than 70 activities in music, theater, circus, storytelling, workshops and recreational games. In the end, there was that taste of wanting more”, said Lu.
The reaction of the public in Rio de Janeiro to Mimo para Crianças surpassed all expectations, and this encouraged Lu to take the mirim festival to other parts of Brazil, just as he has done with the mother festival.
