London 2012 blog

"Everything's changing in Rio, but everything stays the same." This is one of the many Rio paradoxes that Damian Platt explains to me on my last day in the city.

Damian is a Brit who's been working in Rio for the last couple of years. He looks after international partnerships for the "Afroreggae" project which is doing astonishing work in the city’s many favelas, or shantytowns.

We're standing right next to another paradox. In the heart of one of the favelas we’re outside a police station – but you wouldn’t know it. The small breeze block shack looks like many others here except that it has a particularly colourful graffiti mural covering two of its walls.

A relaxed looking policeman is standing in the doorway smiling. Just fifty yards away down the narrow alley is a boy of no more than ten proudly brandishing his automatic rifle for all the world to see. Both apparently aware of the other – neither doing anything about it – for now.

The favelas are largely run by drug gangs – some are virtually no-go zones for the police, but there are raids and there are turf wars between gangs. The casualty rate for young favela dwellers is appallingly high.

And yet you can buy and sell property here (so long as the local gang bosses approve), the favela population can vote and their existence is semi-authorised – indeed one in five of Rio's population is said to live here.

In this most unlikely of circumstances there is an inspirational cultural project which already has links to London 2012. Afroreggae trains hundreds of young people in music, dance, samba and circus skills.

Even more important they offer an alternative to joining the drug gangs. They start as young as seven and some stay with the programme for years.

But this is no easy-come, easy-go drop-in centre. Students have to commit to at least 12 hours of tough professional training every week.

There are all manner of bands and performance groups starting with the beginners but stretching up to the bands that tour internationally to venues like New York’s Carnegie Hall and who, last year, played support to The Rolling Stones.

Just two weeks ago one of the bands played to packed houses at London’s Barbican Arts Centre. Whilst on tour, the Rio band joined workshops with youngsters in the East End of London, sharing their musical skills and, amazingly, preaching racial tolerance.

This is part of a partnership project patiently brokered by Paul Heritage – another Brit who’s been to-ing and fro-ing between London and Rio for many years creating ground breaking arts work.

He mounted a production of Romeo and Juliet provocatively staged on the warring front line between two opposing favelas. Paul and the Barbican are hoping to build on the partnership over the next five years, inspired, in part, by the opportunity that London 2012 offers.

In the same way that the Pam American Games is bringing many kinds of inspiration to Rio right now, Paul, Damian and Afroreggae’s leader, “Junior”, start to look to London 2012 for a fresh set of opportunities.

On my visit to one of the Afroreggae centres, some four performance bands have come from all around the city to perform for me.

Some have been travelling since six in the morning but a four-hour journey has done nothing to dim their exuberance. There are acrobats who tumble and twist not just with skill, but with panache and sheer arrogance.

There are pulsating samba bands, and a mesmerizing dance troupe. Afterwards we talk about the Pan-American Games and London 2012, and the kind of legacy that projects such as Afroreggae can leave.

I conclude the visit by explaining to the young Brasilians that my trip to Rio was mainly to witness the Pan-Am Games opening ceremony. I explain how impressive I thought it was and what a privilege it had been to be there.

But I’m happy to add that the morning’s command performance was every bit as inspiring – and very much a lasting memory to take back to London.