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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
The initiative will take place on May 23rd, starting at 9:30 am, with the meeting point at the Olhos d'Água do Alviela River Beach. The program includes an interactive walk of approximately 4 km to the Ponte da Pedra Dam, accompanied by experts from various fields who will explain topics such as fish biology, sediment dynamics, and river connectivity along the way.
From April 24th to 27th, the Paul da Goucha Local Nature Reserve in Alpiarça will participate in the City Nature Challenge 2026, a citizen science initiative that invites participants to find and document plants and wildlife.
In the fourth episode of the Rios Livres podcast, we talk to Graça Saraiva, landscape architect and researcher.
In the third episode of the Rios Livres podcast, we welcome Ana Catarina Miranda, a biologist by training and coordinator of the Rios Livres program, a GEOTA project that aims to contribute to the conservation and restoration of river ecosystems.
The fourth and final part of the report on river wardens is dedicated to the volunteer guardians and activists who care for waterways at various latitudes.
Far-right parties and industrial lobbies across Europe are exploiting economic insecurity to undermine climate policies, arguing that a choice must be made between a green transition and social justice. But researchers emphasize that both are possible under the right conditions.
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.
