União da Mocidade:
Performance Time: 1:30pm & 4pm
União da Mocidade (Union of the Youth) is a Brazilian music and dance project for 12-25 year olds, which brings together students from all over London to rehearse and perform. Our focus is on Samba, the traditional carnival music and dance of Rio de Janeiro. The organisation has been running since 2004 led by Tamara Arom-Hobbs and Iian Pattinson who love sharing their passion for the art form with young people. Each year the project culminates in creating a new touring production that is showcased at festivals, carnivals and street parades across the city and south-west.
Our 2026 Production is inspired by G.R.E.S Unidos de Vila Isabel’s 2013 song A Vila Canta o Brasil, Celeiro do Mundo, Agua no Feijão que Chegou Mais Um – Vila Sings of Brazil, Breadbasket of the World, Water in the Beans, Another One Has Arrived’
This samba celebrates the simple, generous heart of rural Brazil — a community that rises with the sun, gives thanks for each new day, and works the land with care, faith, and dignity. It honours the rhythm of daily life: coffee at dawn, seeds sown in hope, sweat on the soil, and the deep satisfaction of feeding others from the harvest. The land is treated as blessed, something to cultivate, protect, and pass on.
At its core is the spirit of “água no feijão”, the belief that even when there is little, there is always enough to share. A stool is pulled up, water is added to the beans, cornmeal cake is baked, and everyone is welcomed. Labour turns to celebration as evening falls, lanterns are lit, and the community gathers for singing, samba, and Festa Junina festivities. The fields become the village square, and hard work blossoms into joy.
Festa Junina is the Harvest Festival celebrated in Brazil associated with the 3 Saint’s days in June – Anthony of Padua, John the Baptist and Peter) It is a portrait of hospitality, gratitude, and collective abundance — where caring for the land and caring for one another are one and the same, and where from humble soil grows poetry, music, and shared celebration.
In our re-interpretation, we extend this idea to focus on the SEEDS of SAMBA that we sow in the young people we work with. The concept that ‘We Reap What We Sow’ (Colhemos Que Plantamos) and that the themes described for the land apply to people too. The work, positivity and energy we put into learning music and dance is returned to us and our audiences in self-fulfilling process.