I think I put on weight, but I've loved being in the Alentejo. We're finally going home after the last day of filming for the CREATOUR documentary. I completely lost track of the distances we traveled and number of hours of footage.
We crossed the whole country looking for creative tourism initiatives. Creative tourism connects active participation and creative activities with travel. These activities provide travellers an opportunity to learn about local cultures, artisanal and artistic techniques, to exchange thoughts and ideas with local residents and creators and to have opportunities for creative self-expression.
CREATOUR is a multidisciplinary research and application project, it's a grand experiment working across 4 regions of Portugal: The North, Centre, Alentejo and Algarve. It involves 5 research centres and 40 pilot organisations across the country and it aims to be much more than a tourism project, connecting culture, tourism and local and regional development. CREATOUR's understanding of creative tourism involves four dimensions, which are what we are looking for in the activities that the pilot projects involved, which are: active participation, visitor learning, creative self-expression and, most importantly, immersion in a new environment, culture, new traditions and places.
Creating a creative tourism network was one of the goals and one of the main focuses throughout the CREATOUR project. One of the core activities of the project were Idea Labs, which promoted this idea. During the Idea Labs, we were able to discuss, think about and develop the activities that were being carried out, based on the idea of reciprocal knowledge and learning between the pilots, which co-invested in this project with us.
In addition to the Idea Labs, we also had other components, such as publications written for both academics and professionals, and conferences that allowed us to share and discuss the results both within Portugal and abroad. We could see that both foreign and Portuguese participants were completely inspired by what they were doing. They were curious.
The most interesting aspect is the connection that forms between people. There was a very friendly atmosphere in all the workshops. Loulé Criativo is probably the oldest creative tourism project we know of that has all four of the dimensions we established as pillars of creative tourism.
Today, Loulé Criativo has organised three workshops: A palm weaving workshop at Casa da Empreita, a copper beating one at Oficina de Caldeireiros And a pottery workshop at Casa do Barro. Loulé Criativo is a project that aims to promote just a few of our traditional arts and crafts, to give those who visit us the chance to experience some of the traditions in Loulé, so they may understand our local identity better. So we have put workshops together in these 3 areas, so people can take something physical with them when they leave once they've learned the techniques to make the same things again, at home.
I do a lot of creative things: photography, filming, and such. But I wanted to do something more physical with my hands. I wanted to hold something in my hands.
Of course, you try and fail a lot, but that's how you learn. Not all the activities are easy. I'm thinking of that time, at Casa do Barro, in São Pedro do Corval, when I couldn't turn my wheel and mould the clay at the same time.
It was much harder than I thought it would be, much harder to work on the wheel, to make something. from start to finish, the whole process, which is very technical and creative, is extremely difficult. That's why this art form is so important.
It looks easy to centre the clay here, but it's not. Clay is hard to centre, but there's a trick to it. You learn to press your elbow into your hip to steady your hand, and the other shapes the clay.
Watching the teacher with all that skill all that professionalism, I thought when it was my turn I'd do the same. That's when you realise the time it takes to get that good when a technique is that hard to learn, but it's so good to try these things and at the heart of it, these initiatives value the practices, because if we don't, they disappear over time. They're a way to go back in time when they had wonderful things.
On our trip around the country, we met people with fantastic stories. Like, Nuno Coelho. He lived and worked in Lisbon before he moved to Alcoutim, in the Algarve countryside, where he became a shepherd.
It was my childhood dream to live in Alcoutim, because I liked the region and believed in this project I'm involved in, with Algarve goats. Algarve goats have a huge potential in terms of the quality of milk, and they're adapted to the region. So, well-adapted in terms of food, so they can eat a bit of what the land provides.
We're giving tours where we demonstrate how to look after Algarve goats in terms of grazing, milking… This is harder than it looks. I'm going to try again. Hold it like this… We've had a lot of visitors, especially foreign ones more than Portuguese people, anyway, but people love it.
They think it's a really interesting experience. It brings them closer to the countryside. Nowadays it's hard to find this type of farming.
These days it's mostly intensive farming and the people are in the city, not in the countryside. Here, we bring the countryside closer to the people and people closer to the countryside. People always leave feeling comforted, They feel good.
They love it. They like spending time with us. Escaping from the city, into the countryside, looking for rest and creativity takes people to the projects we have on CREATOUR.
One of them is the Estival da Estrela, in the heart of Serra da Estrela, in the village of Faia, where, for a week, artists live and create with festivalgoers. After a week spent together, we became a family because there is no backstage. Artists become participants and participants can be artists.
It's like a Yoga pose and the flower head is growing towards the sky. My work is always about connection between the earth and the sky. What we did last week was make a mosaic with Portuguese tiles.
I also did that as a workshop. The feedback I get is that a lot of people are grateful for being able to help me and I am so grateful to have them help me finish my work. People learn about what it is to make these big sculptures.
What I also like is the sense of freedom you get when you are here in the landscape and you go down to the river. It is very nice. Felting is done by compacting woollen fibres to make fabric, which is actually the oldest fabric known by mankind.
It was the first textile that humans could produce and is basically fibres arranged one on top of the other, and massaged until they are compacted, and that's how you make textiles which are impossible textiles, in a way, because they have no seams. They're moulded a bit like clay more than how we would expect fabrics to be made. The girl who gives the workshop is a very creative and inspiring person.
She has a nice way of giving the lesson. It's just very lovely to do it, just work with your hands and create something. This workshop was about the effect of sound on the human psyche.
I am a sound designer and musician and we practice poetry via psychiatry. Or the other way around. We perform at the festival and this workshop was about how I approach sound in a treatment with my patient, the poet.
What kind of sounds I produce to make him feel certain ways and make him talk about his experiences more and better. I am a stand-up comedian, but I am also an animator and illustrator and my workshop is about illustrating comics. I really enjoy being creative here in this country, because we can enjoy the view, the food.
But I am always creative in my head so I can't shut that down, I don't have to push it in my holiday. It is the holiday, so I am happier by the day. To close the festival, there's a party in the village of Faia, where festivalgoers and local people come together.
It's very interesting to see this meeting between a traditional Portuguese rural culture and the urban, contemporary culture of the festivalgoers. Like, for example, Catharina in the Mondego Valley. It was interesting to find more foreigners who moved to Portugal and that make up a cultural and artistic critical mass in these places in the interior of the country.
Like in Vale do Ferro, in the municipality of Odemira, we met a German couple: Helga, a jeweller and Walter, a sculptor, and they organise workshops for visitors. In this workshop I want to give the participants the possibility to experience basic techniques of jewellery. Hammering, sewing or filing and also soldering.
It should be fun and a joy just to experience and see what we can do with basic materials: wire and sheets of brass and copper. I explained the basis and inspiration of my work was the African figures. The basis is to reduce the figure to the minimum and carry over a sense of dynamism.
I can't stop smiling. I feel happiness, I am inspired deeply as an artist, as a person, as a human being. To be here is happiness.
That same day, in the afternoon, we got the chance to meet Helena. A Dutch woman living in Odemira who gave us a very interesting experience where we created something together. The workshop is an interactive activity where you are not going to work with the loom, but you are going to work as a loom.
You are the loom. We are a human loom. We all have one thread in each hand, as if one thread was in one shaft, and then with a weaving draft pattern, we are going to lift certain shafts, certain hands, certain numbers, certain threads while another one passes the thread.
That constructs the pattern. With this technique you have a very close experience to how a pattern is constructed in a textile. When we went over to do the human loom, I found a wonderful way to understand what it's like to work with your hands, making with your body something Helena does every day using her fingers and her imagination.
What I found most interesting was how authentic the activities were and getting so close to the people we were there with. That was the most striking part for me, today. In addition to fantastic people, this trip allowed us to visit small Portuguese villages we've never been to.
Remember São Brissos, for example where we learned the art of wicker work which we used to make bird feeders and nests which we'll put out into nature. So as well as bringing back a local art form, we create art that has a huge sense of awareness and concern for the environment. I think it's really important to do this sort of activity because it connects you with communities wherever you're travelling.
What makes these activities valuable is that they're traditional. Young people don't do them any more and it's important that all generations take part, like this one. I think it is pretty cool to do something that is involved with nature and also human work.
I am happy I did something like this because I know the birds will have a place to sleep, to eat. It's like being at one with nature at the same time. I am pretty sure I would love trying it again.
Do you remember that time we had to go to Caldas da Rainha in August? It was unbearably hot, but the further we went along that inspiring journey through Bordallo Pinheiro's life, the more we forgot the heat. It was a 2-phase project: The first phase was a performance: a cultural, travelling play where Inês Fouto played 3 characters: "Gato Pires", the "Marquess" and "Maria dos pontos nos is".
I led the guided tour of the city, in the historic centre, and explained how Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro's family fitted into the history of pottery in Caldas da Rainha. I would give visitors an idea of what the city was like in the 19th century. The next activity, was a tile-painting workshop, run by 105 Ceramic Lab.
We chose the magnificent chapel of São Sebastião which is right on the Praça da Fruta (Fruit Square), It's one of the landmarks of the city. It couldn't be a more perfect setting for this workshop. We demonstrated how you produce hand-crafted tiles using stamping tools and we also decorated them by painting them using the pipette tips, so you can mix lots of different colours and make 3D tiles.
They're baked after that and they'll be sent to the people that have painted them, by post. When I look at all this, I had never imagined that the process was so complex and amazing. Thank you for the experience.
Museums are often thought of as structures that are a bit static, where visitors observe and acquire knowledge, but where there's nothing to interact with. But that's changing. Mosaico Lab is an example, a pilot project here in Conímbriga, where visitors can have a creative experience by creating mosaic art.
What the Romans left, from back in their time, was also an expression of creativity. At their core, mosaic workshops allow us to bring this creative practice up to date allowing people nowadays to explore the art of the mosaic and the language contained within it. They can create their own relationship with history.
Creative tourism is extremely important for places with a small population, because they show us how you can create a new structure that's innovative for a place and its people. Much more than cultural tourism, a type of tourism can be created that makes visitors stay longer. They connect with the place, with other parts of the surrounding areas, and build a different relationship with the communities within them, as well as their own relationship, with their own culture and heritage.
In the artistic village of Feital, the "Shelter Route" has a very important mission. It's to take visitors who come from outside to visit shelters that have been abandoned by shepherds, changing the mindset of the local population, in terms of their heritage making them take an interest and want to protect it. So the idea they started off with, that what they have is worthless and they can sell it, ends up changing.
On the other hand, this land and its people are a source of inspiration for artistic creation, as we can see in Brigite's work. This place is linked to the importance that we should attribute to the people who used to walk this way. It was an old path, that stopped being usable in the 60s/70s when the first cars came about.
I've used clogs which is what the workers used to wear to try to honour them and their hard work, these people who lived and coexisted between two peoples. In rural areas with small populations, ancient arts and crafts tend to disappear. It really is important that the village elders pass this knowledge on to the younger members to revitalise these traditions.
Like in Covão do Lobo, it was interesting to see that there were no specific teachers for the activities we did when we went there. They were local, older people, who took the initiative, themselves, to show visitors how to make bulrush mats while they told stories about how pitch was produced. My dad stopped making pitch about 35 years ago.
He was one of the last ones to keep it going. He had the pitch oven on the side of the road and we girls had boyfriends by that point, and we were embarrassed of it all. They called it the “land of the black corn bread”.
We thought it was all very embarrassing, but actually, it wasn't embarrassing at all. It was how he supported us, how he fed us. We could have something to eat.
We have to stop to get something to eat. We could have a "tiborna" like the one we ate when we were in Faro, at Tertúlia Algarvia, where we learned to make "tibornas" the traditional way, just one would have been a meal. Or those asparagus "Migas" we had in that traditional tavern in Beja topped off with an Alentejo tune we all sang together.
That mixture of workshops of Alentejo music and food made so much sense. It's that kind of connection that we look for with creative tourism: authenticity, feeling like we belong wherever we're visiting. Because it was precisely in the taverns where men would meet to eat and sing together.
I found it very interesting to learn a song but in an unusual setting, sat around a table, in a shared place where people share everything. I think that was the first time I'd tried to sing like that. The "migas" dish I made gave me an idea that I hope I'll follow through with for a piece of art I want to create.
I'm here in Beja on an artistic residency and my work ends up being fed by the experiences I have between my body and the Alentejo. What I did today fed into an idea for my next piece of work. Not all the activities we went to were related to traditional crafts.
Creative tourism can also be modern, or even experimental, for example the activities we did at the VIC Aveiro Arts House. The workshop is about kinetic sculptures and the possibilities of sound-making through analogue movement with different objects. It is very expressive and then take it through different pedals with different effects to create soundscapes.
It is to play with sound, basically. I think this experience opened another part of my brain that had never functioned before, or at least that I didn't know was there, so I was quite surprised with this sound factor. I think it opened up my head and my thinking, in that sense.
I think it was really good. Thanks. The workshop's called Noise Puppets and is based on a small amplifier circuit where we play with the feedback and with minor distortions tucked into a soft toy.
First off, it's interesting because the experience is somewhere between innocent and weird, people learn a bit about electronics and laugh along the way. We learned a bit about the electronic components you need to make a sound circuit. We learned to solder, we learned how to put the whole circuit together, with all the parts.
And we ended up with a sound circuit that worked, and made a few noises. That was it! It's interesting.
I think it's a good way to do it with few people, because it gave us more time to ask Martí questions and he would explain everything in detail, he's very good at explaining. That was it! Encontrarte Amares is another example of creative tourism mixed with contemporary art.
It allows for co-creation and for people to participate together whether they're Portuguese or foreign artists coming together with the local community. Encontrarte Amares is a get-together that takes place every 2 years since 2009, in Amares. It tries to bring together a varied audience, separate bodies, sectors of the social economy so that we can strengthen, deepen or question how we can bring our core values together.
It tries to summon the local population encouraging it to participate fully, so different audiences and artists come into contact with each other. It somehow tries to bring democracy to a very rural culture. To do so, it provides workshops, fine arts, film and music.
This multitude of artistic languages that inspires everyone there to participate and collaborate. This year, more than 80 artists participated, both from Portugal and abroad. Over 400 locals took part in the activities and through those activities, we tried to create a place everyone could join in, where we could question the way we relate to one another, the way in which we accept others' differences as being a good thing, and not as something that comes between us.
In that sense, it's a meeting, a coming together. An attempt to create alternatives, alternative ways of life and see how art can cross over, infiltrate challenge or provoke us to relate to each other. You get to a holiday town with your children.
What are you going to do? In Évora, you can play a game that'll get you exploring the city in a fun way. Play Évora is a product for families that has never existed before.
It's aimed at parents and children so they can play the old-fashioned way. That is without phones or apps. They're using paper, playing together.
It's all about talking and finding out about the history of Évora. There's always a historical element, it's educational, and it's family-oriented. I really liked the Play Évora experience.
It was a really fun educational way to explore the beautiful city of Évora and interact with people during the various stages of the game and the course. I really liked it, because I got to know the city in a new way and I thought it was really interesting making it into a game instead of us just wandering around listening to a guided tour. I really, really, really.
. . really, really, really.
. . really, really, really liked it!
You have other activities like this, one is in Boliqueime, in the Algarve, getting in touch with nature through an organic farm, where they grow plants, but also run activities that get you in touch with nature. We have a big educational component and that's related to growing organic food. We want this to be a place for families.
When a family comes here, they can pick food, they can try it and all the while they're coming into contact with farming they end up helping us care for the animals. On certain days they can help us seed, plant and pick whatever is happening that day. Today's activity is natural carpentry.
What we do is we collect materials that are lying around, tree trunks and parts of trunks, and we make something. Today we've set a theme related to the time of year: Swords and Fairy Doors. They're magical objects that we use to cast spells.
They're going to make a door for the fairy to go into her home, in the tree or a sword to make them brave. Podence carnival attracts a lot of tourists because of how authentic it is. Where we're concerned, creative tourism gives visitors the chance to immerse themselves in the traditions.
Through painting their own masks, visitors get to experience and become a part of the local culture. You decorated that beautifully! I've only just seen it.
They look really good. I never would have thought I was such a good painter. I really was very interested in these masks.
We're almost there. It's been quite the journey. And in conclusion, I think it made all the difference going to visit each pilot project and seeing how they're implementing their own creative tourism activities.
Seeing the potential, but also the difficulties of the various projects and finding out about the context of each one. It's been quite a journey, and both an inspiring and challenging one. Challenging because it's a unique, new project that aims to develop research with a strong connection between academia and society.
And that's also why, it's so inspiring because we've taken steps towards forming a basis of shared learning where we can carry out research in a more creative way, a more innovative way, and have a bigger impact. For instance, the importance of creating a network and partners. We see our pilots as pioneers of this network and we look forward to reinforcing their work and expanding nationally with the launch of CREATOUR Azores and internationally, working with colleagues in many countries that we've met through the work of CREATOUR.
We need each other. So this type of tourism is about bringing you in and creating community. This is about who I am, this is what I am, this is how I engage in life, in the world through an art form, through a place, through how I believe and see the world, and I am moved.
I am moved deeply. My partner got me these earrings here and now I move happily. Tchau!
