The concept is similar to of the Street Fest that animated downtown Faro on summer fridays, but this time the theme is quite different.
The Algarve capital set up a Christmas program that will bring lots of street entertainment and "more than fifty initiatives" to the historic area of the city, between 26 November and 24 December, and will only end in 2017, after a Passagem de Year that will have Virgo Suta and DJ Cristian F as protagonists.
The Chamber of Faro will invest close to 200 thousand euros in what is intended to be a strong argument for attracting people to downtown and boosting local commerce. For this, the local authority rejoined associations representing entrepreneurs, who helped to set up the program, and used, almost exclusively, the “silver of the house” to guarantee the moments of entertainment and other initiatives that are part of the plans.
One of the measures that is already beginning to be visible, in the city center, but also in the parishes, is the traditional Christmas lighting, to which, in 2016, the street decoration imagined by the Farense scenographer Tó Quintas (ACTA – A Companhia de Algarve Theatre). The structures have already started to be assembled, but the lights will only be turned on on the 25th of November, the day on which the merchants of Baixa de Faro will promote a Black Friday.
The Christmas schedule of Faro 2016 starts on the following day, a Saturday, which was the day of the week chosen to bring the Christmas spirit to the streets (Baixa Street Fest, during the summer, took place on Fridays). The arrival of Santa Claus will be one of the highlights of the program (the other is the farewell to São Nicolau, on December 23) and will have associated a parade/performance starring local cultural agents. These days, the trade of Faro it will be open from 10am to 00pm.
On the first and last Saturday, elements of the group «Maxim' Us», from Santa Bárbara de Nexe, actors from Te-Atrito and musicians from Funkarmónica will form a troupe and spread animation through the streets of the historic center of Faro. These events, as well as those that will be repeated on the three Saturdays in between, but with a smaller cast, will be artistically directed by Mauro Amaral, a multifaceted artist from Faro who, as president of ARCA, launched Komboyo dos Lokos, a funeral parade for Carnival that had nine editions, in Faro.
This will be the most “energetic” part of a program with initiatives for different tastes. From the outset, the already traditional display of Christmas trees made by students from schools in Faro, to which is added a Crafts Fair and the itinerary of the nativity scenes, with more than 20 recreations of the birth of Jesus to visit throughout the county, as well as some unprecedented initiatives, such as a window decoration competition. Neither solidarity was forgotten.
The mutual help, which is always closely linked to the Christmas spirit, will be evident in the tent that will house the school Christmas trees, which this year will all be concentrated in a closed space in Largo da Pontinha, due to "acts of vandalism" that have occurred in others years, according to the vice president of the Chamber of Faro Paulo Santos, who presented the «vast and varied» Christmas program.
Those who visit this tent will be invited to bring with them a liter of milk, foodstuffs that will later be distributed by the council's IPSS. For its part, the Chamber will offer a gift to the smallest visitors to the tent, in this case a book created especially for the occasion by the Association of Designers of the South, commissioned by the Municipality of Faro.
The Farense Chamber asked ADS members to imagine a mascot for Faro and create a comic book in which she was the protagonist. Algarve designers took up the challenge and took it even further, creating a group of mascots for Faro, two boys, a girl and a dog, who are the protagonists of the book «A Christmas Adventure in Faro».
Also supportive will be the Handicraft Fair, which will be installed every Saturday, Sunday and public holidays at Jardim Manuel Bívar and will bring together «more than four dozen artisans». In this case, the revenue raised from the exhibitors' registration – 3,5 euros per day, over ten days – reverts to the Associação Oncológica do Algarve.
the Christmas program of Faro it also includes other types of initiatives, namely sports, such as a Navigation Trophy of the Portuguese Motorcycling Federation, on December 3rd and 4th, which will bring together famous names in motorcycling, including Paulo Gonçalves and Hélder Rodrigues, and the traditional Corrida dos Reis, which closes the festivities on January 7th. The Parc Fermé of this event will be installed in Jardim Manuel Bívar.
In the new year, in addition to the Virgo Suta concert and the performance of Cristian F from Faro, there is fireworks, which “will also be a fireworks show, like last year, but with several surprises”.
In this adventure, the Chamber of Faro has a partnership with the association Comércio da Baixa de Faro, of the Association of Commerce and Services of the Algarve Region (ACRAL) and of the Algarve Hotel and Similar Industry Association (AIHSA), as well as the municipal companies FAGAR and Ambifaro.
«This program is the result of a joint work that we did with the different entities, as had already happened at Baixa Street Fest. Despite the investment being made by the municipality, this was a participatory process», guaranteed Paulo Santos, who presented the program.
The president of the Chamber of Faro stressed that this is another step in a strategy to consolidate traditional trade in Faro that the municipality has been developing «for two years now», not hiding that part of the impulse comes from the opening closer and closer of the Mar Shopping mall, associated with the IKEA store in Loulé.
The money invested in this Christmas program comes of the amount carried over from 2015 to 2016 of more than 4 million euros, which, after a budget review, was channeled for various purposes, including Christmas entertainment, but mainly for the realization of various works which ended up having to be postponed due to a government decision..
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