New European Bauhaus

EIT Community Initiative

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Stories from both sides (Esposende and Viana do Castelo, Portugal)

10/01/2022 22:39

“Stories from both sides” build-up a collective narrative and vision for the Neiva River mouth, in the Northern littoral coast of Portugal, for the re-design of the local population interaction with the natural surrounding protected areas.

Challenge addressed

The bottom-line will be to promote an awareness increase on the fragile ecosystems in each side of the river, towards their valorisation and protection.

Solution proposed, focus area

The project focused on the Neiva River as the divisive line between two municipalities / cities and two protected areas, Northern Littoral Natural Park and Littoral GeoPark, on the premise that it is critical to look beyond these barriers, and how the existing and similar environmental, cultural, social, and economic values and dynamics should ground this goal.

Target Groups

Local inhabitants from both municipalities / cities, closer to the Neiva river mouth area;

Local school community (students and teachers) from both municipalities / cities, closer to the Neiva river mouth area.

Main activities / milestones

Ethnographic and immersive on-site visit/trails together with local community members;

Interviews of community members on local stories about the territory;

Photographic recordings of community members and places;

Video recording of community members and places;

Participatory digital and analogue photo recording by the community members.

Partnership

Rio Neiva – Environmental NGO

Municipality of Esposende

Municipality of Viana do Castelo

Outcomes

The project contributed to a collective response, fostering new conversations grounded in the Neiva river mouth social, cultural, and environmental fabrics. Through the interviews, a good diversity of experiences and profiles had been reached by the project. The project outcomes are openly available on the project website, and listed here as follows:

Outdoor photo exhibition: This exhibition is a collection of photos of all those that participated in the interviews, providing them a respectful visibility, interlaced with photos from different territory locations, and photos from the analogic cameras by local students. The exhibition is physically available between December 2021 and March 2022.

Narrative and Photo Book: The narrative and photo book documents the interviews, providing direct quotes relevant to the project scope. Moreover, this output narrates, written by the team, the main findings according to a past, present, and future storyline. Two participants also provided their own authored poems for the book, one specifically written for the project.

Video Documentary : The video documentary is based on all conducted interviews, curated bearing in mind the project goal and ensuring a narrative which cover the diversity of perspectives touching climate and environmental sensibilities grounded in the territory reality

For more information please visit the project website

Esposende

1 Support