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This was our initial question when we began to reflect on this topic. If culture is the best expression of humanity, then naturally it must participate in this effort of change and awareness. We therefore want to join artists, entities and cultural spaces from all over the country in a joint effort to ensure that sustainability and resilience are our top priorities.
We believe that culture must play a critical role in raising environmental awareness. Both in terms of reinventing ourselves in our daily lives and in terms of inspiring society. Sobressalto is the project that aims to help make this gradual transition, providing tools and promoting reflections and debates within the cultural ecosystem.
We started at Gerador by looking inwards and taking small steps in this direction. We are still learning and have a lot to do, but on this page you can find out what we have already started to implement, the steps we will take next and, finally, the content we are publishing about sustainability.
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We have already started implementing a set of ideas that address the cultural community, our readers and followers. These are small steps that you can discover below.
We want to support the cultural community in this green transition with a set of reflections, recommendations and tools. In the button below, you can download a document with proposals for good environmental practices for artists and authors. We are working to progressively share more and more meaningful information for the cultural community.
We are continually putting together a set of tools that can be useful for the sustainable transition of cultural agents. We are publishing a new document here, this time dedicated to good environmental practices aimed more specifically at cultural entities and spaces.
We are publishing the results of a survey on sustainable artistic practices, carried out by the project villa villa. This is an environmentally conscious artist residency program based in Portugal that is dedicated to supporting contemporary artists and curators in the process of making their studio practices more environmentally friendly. In this survey, villa villa found out what motivations and obstacles artists encounter when trying to reduce their environmental impact and also put together an extensive set of tips that they hope will be useful to other artists. The document is in English.
From 2021 onwards, the environment and sustainability will become a critical dimension of Gerador’s editorial strategy. In this sense, sustainability will be increasingly present in our content, both here on the site, and in Gerador Magazine. We therefore seek to frequently bring this issue to the forefront, even when not linked to culture, in order to inform our audience of the new environmental challenges we are facing.
At the gym Gerador We dedicate a good deal of time to collecting data, analyzing and regularly publishing information on the cultural situation in the country. Since 2019, we have been publishing the annual study Culture Barometer, where we analyzed the Portuguese people’s perception of culture in Portugal. From now on, the relationship with sustainability will also be present in our research, whether through the Barometer or new dedicated studies.
A Generator Academy is a teaching and knowledge space focused on the practical dimension, with 15-hour and 25-hour courses and short workshops, aimed at the cultural and artistic community. We have already launched training courses where sustainability is the protagonist and we want to reveal more and more courses and workshops dedicated to this subject.
We are reviewing the processes around the creation and production of Gerador Magazine. Since February 2021, the magazine has been printed on recycled paper. But we didn't stop there. In June 2021, we also launched a digital edition of the magazine and stopped selling at our usual points of sale, which required us to travel constantly to ensure distribution. The magazine can be purchased at our shop online.
Sustainability has been an internal concern for some time now. With Sobressalto, we took the first steps towards a clear strategy. It was time to look inward, learn and gradually rethink the way we work. From the communication materials we produce, to our events, office conditions and even our relationship with artists. We still have a long way to go, but we are committed to it.
Our commitment to sustainability is definitive. We therefore want to be better within Gerador, present new ideas, produce new content, deepen our knowledge and establish national and international partnerships that are increasingly relevant for the cultural sector.
We aim to provide a technical support service for all cultural agents. This office will have a multidisciplinary team that will visit cultural spaces and entities in order to assess and suggest personalized changes, so that the environmental impact is increasingly reduced.
Discover news, reports, interviews and many other contents that combine culture and the environment
In the second part of the report, we explore the resurgence of the river warden figure in Portugal over the last decade.
Alexandra Aragão is the guest on the second episode of the Rios Livres Podcast, a collaboration between... Gerador and GEOTA, which addresses the importance of the sustainability of riverine ecosystems.
During the 20th century, Portugal's waterways benefited from the close and constant care of river wardens: figures of authority who patrolled the banks daily, mediated conflicts, and ensured the preservation of this common good. The profession was abolished in 1995. In recent years, in an attempt to meet the increasingly urgent challenges of preserving water resources, new river wardens have emerged across the country.
João Joanaz de Melo is the first guest on the Rios Livres Podcast, a collaboration between Gerador and GEOTA, which addresses the importance of the sustainability of riverine ecosystems.
The GEOTA documentary, produced by Gerador, was distinguished at the Nebrodi Cinema DOC Festival, in Italy.
The debate on degrowth is primarily driven by the need for countries in the global north to change their patterns, but this does not mean that there are no degrowthist views in other parts of the world.
In the third part of the report on degrowth, we see how consumption does not have to represent consumerism.
Between the tides of the Ria Formosa, the once-forgotten Culatra stands today as a living laboratory of the energy transition: fishermen who once boycotted elections to have electricity are installing solar panels, recycling nets, and dreaming of becoming 100% self-sustainable by 2030, transforming this corner of the Algarve into a beacon illuminating the future of coastal communities.
In search of the “orange feeling” — and its dark side. A portrait of the invisible work of garbage collectors behind the scenes at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark.
In recent years, there has been a growing trend in Europe towards criminalising climate activism, with authorities using new laws and legal proceedings to stop environmental protests. Portugal is not immune to this phenomenon: from symbolic actions on the streets of Lisbon to blockades of infrastructure, several Portuguese climate activists have faced arrests and formal charges – including heavy fines – for exercising their right to protest.
