The “365 Algarve” program, which combines support for the arts with the promotion of a strong cultural program in the low tourist season to help alleviate seasonality, starts this Saturday, October 1st, in three Algarve cities – Tavira, Faro and Lagoon.
The kick-off for this «innovative and pioneering» program in Portugal, for bringing together culture and tourism, through the Secretaries of State for Culture and Tourism, and being endowed with 1,5 million euros, will be given at 15:00 on Saturday, at the Álvaro de Campos Library, in Tavira.
Dália Paulo, commissioner of the new program “365 Algarve”, revealed, in an interview with the program “Impressões”, produced jointly by Algarve University Radio (RUA FM), and the Sul Informação, which is an initiative that «brought together more than two dozen cultural associations in the city of Tavira, which is spectacular, due to the ability to work in a network around a theme that is Álvaro de Campos' Birthday Party».
On this first day, the Municipal Library receives the presentation of both “365 Algarve” and the “Festa dos Anos de Álvaro de Campos”, organized by the collective Partilha Alternativa, which «has a program that lasts for two months: starts on the 1st of October and runs until 30 November», including more than two dozen activities.
But on that inaugural day of “365 Algarve”, still in Tavira, at Casa Álvaro de Campos, downtown, there will be «a small note of music and poetry», and then there will be inaugurated «two exhibitions in the city, in two small galleries'. These are “Pessoas de Pessoa”, an exhibition of paintings by Fonseca Martins, at Tavira D'Artes, and “And if they knew who you are, what would they know?”, another painting exhibition, but by Kinga Subicka, at Espaço THE.
This will be the start of two months of intense activity, linked to Álvaro de Campos, that heteronym of Fernando Pessoa that the poet gave birth in the city of Gilão. "The idea is that, whoever arrives, realizes that Álvaro de Campos is from Tavira and that they feel like Álvaro de Campos in these two months," explained the commissioner.
follow later Faro, where the «inauguration of an exhibition will take place, which also brings together two entities – CIAC Center for Research in Arts and Communication from the University of Algarve and P28, and which focuses on young Algarve breeders». It will be at 18:00, at Largo de São Francisco.
Dália Paulo stressed that it was «very interesting to have young Algarve creators right at the start of “365 Algarve”, with the exhibition Outdoor, which takes art to the street", that is, an exhibition that "does not invite us to enter the museum, it invites us to have a perception of art from the street, its dialogue with cities, its dialogue with those who passes, and from there, also create a different look at how the city is made and how the city interacts with art. It's a very interesting proposal, with easy access to what young creators are doing right now, and which allows us to take people to museums later, but from the street».
This project, which starts in Faro with a work by the young artist Vilma Correia, go later travel through the Alcoutim counties, Faro, Lagos and Loulé, until May next year.
And because 1 October is also World Music Day, the opening of “365 Algarve” culminates, at 21 pm, with a concert by pianist Adriano Jordão at the Lagoa Municipal Auditorium, which Dália Paulo classifies as a «beautiful proposal to end this first day".
The concert, promoted by the ArtedoSul association with the Municipality of Lagoa, costs 8 euros and will even have a special guest of honor: Economy Minister Manuel Caldeira Cabral.
For the commissioner of the new program, the activities chosen for Saturday allow, from the outset, «to understand one of the strategic lines of the program, which is to be throughout the Algarve – here we have Barlavento, Centro and Sotavento». And they make known other strategic lines, which is the fact that the program is dedicated to various areas of creation, such as music, visual arts and performing arts.
«On this first day, we can already have a taste that you can see how the “365 Algarve” will develop over the remaining eight months», guaranteed Dália Paulo.
For the program's commissioner, who is herself a person with extensive experience in the area of cultural management and programming, the "great news" of "365 Algarve" is that it is "built exclusively with Algarve cultural associations and Algarve municipalities". which allowed the construction of a “participatory and identity” programming.
Dália Paulo revealed the final accounts of this first year: 51 entities are involved, which will present 63 projects, in more than a thousand presentations over these eight months, between October and May 2017, from one end of the region to the other, that is, from Alcoutim to Aljezur.
«We can feel in this program the pulse of the region, what it wants to offer, what it wants to share, the concerns of the region, but also what is best and wants to provide both its residents and visitors». And this because “it is a program that is based on the identity of the territory and on contemporary creation, in the spirit of the Convention of Faro».
And because this “365 Algarve” is to continue, when its first edition is about to go out into the field, the next one is already being considered. Dália Paulo considers that, for the schedule for the period from October 2017 to May 2018, what is planned is to start "working on it from the end of November/December, so that, in January, we would already have the complete design of programming'.
"We would very much like to have the program already defined in March, at least in general terms, so that we can do what we have not had the opportunity to do this year, which is to reach the issuing markets [of tourists] with the necessary advance notice, so that “365 Algarve” may be one of the reasons for the inversion of seasonality in the region» and may be the basis for choosing the region to spend holidays outside the peak tourist season, that is, beyond the summer.
But because the “365 Algarve” will take place all over the region, the invitation has already been made for all the people of the Algarve to be the first to take advantage of a cultural program designed and thought out in the region, as has never happened before. On October 1st, you know: Tavira, Faro and Lagoa are the places to go.
Click here to know all the programming of “365 Algarve”
Listen here, in full, the interview of Dália Paulo to «Impressões»
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