Our vision is to co-create a comprehensive and accessible analysis of Northeastern Brazilian performing arts as they relate to resistance and change-making, through partnership between academics and artists. It starts from an acknowledgement that arts are forged by the context in which they develop, and also influence that context. In Northeastern Brazil the context has been one of struggle, and many past injustices have been overlaid with contemporary threats.

Current threats cannot be met through processes of development – on the contrary, they have largely be caused by them. In focusing on artistic practice and aesthetics as vehicles for resistance and change in the face of various insecurities, the vision brings in a major element of human experience, expression and creativity that has conventionally been missing from the the study of security in contexts of development, and from social science more generally.