Something very special happened in early July 2019 when for one weekend the Bridgewater Canal was transformed into a riot of colour, music and dance when the Brazilian carnaval arrived.

The story of this weekend had begun the year before when artists from Brazil and the UK - Lowri Evans, Renato Bolelli Rebouças and Rodolfo Amorim - spent a month living along the Bridgewater Canal, getting to know the waterway and the people that use it. During their time they fished for stories, made costumes, took portraits of the people they met, set up beaches on the canal banks and said hello to every person they passed.

They started scheming Precarious Carnaval which would mix Brazilian festival with a distinctly Salford feel, a weekend which would pull together hundreds of local people for a colourful celebration of community connected by one very special canal. It would be joyous and jagged, perfectly precarious as we would wonder: where are we heading?

Fast-forward to June 2019, the Precarious Carnaval team arrived from Brazil and began working with performers, makers and shakers from across Salford, collaborating with over 30 community groups and hundreds of people to stage the event. 

Part-party, part-procession, part-performance extravaganza; Precarious Carnaval turned into an unforgettable journey which saw a confetti of performances, roaming scenes and strange spectacles as well as sculptures, installations and street parties.

From the past, present and future of England's first canal, Precarious Carnaval was divided into three epic acts that tipped the world on its head, taking audiences on a journey through time from 1761 to 2061 to make sense of now in 2019.

To take a photographic journey through Precarious Carnaval click here.

Precarious Carnaval from PeopleStaring on Vimeo.