In Portugal, preserving the collective memory.
The Traditions Program is an EDP support initiative, with funds and monitoring projects that aim to give value to regional or local traditions in our country, specifically in towns where EDP has producing centers.
To uncover roots and reinvent our identity
The Traditions Program, supported by the EDP Foundation, is a biennial project that aims to voluntarily support the most genuine traditions in the popular culture, allowing the recovery of currently disappearing ancestral practices, streamlining a reflection on culture as a way to preserve the collective memory, as well as the production of cultural assets and its disclosure to new public.
This program has a high human component and is very close to people. The intention is to ease the passage of knowledge about the generational traditions, and avoid that they get lost while contributing towards the appreciation of the population’s worth.
Technology that, in many cases, has been driving us away from tradition, manufacturing, and living closer to the communities, can become very responsible through an authentic return to the origins, in the future.
The growing industrialization and automation have been encouraging the replacement of man by machine, and even the extinction of some jobs. We are watching, the need to find new occupations, in which Man is (still) unmatched. The artistic work is one of the paths, as the “A Arte do Latoeiro” project, supported by this program, shows us.
Boosting them, through tourism, is also a way to keep the traditions alive. One example of it is the “Pintar e Cantar dos Reis” project, an Alenquer tradition, supported by the Traditions Program, which consists in gathering people from several councils, on the eve of January 5 or 6, and walking this path on foot, during which the “reiseiros” sing and paint traditional symbols (hearts, stars, vases) of the building facades.
The “ID: Memória Itinerante”, led to the theater tradition and puppet workshops in residential homes and schools, creating a connection between generations, is an example of a project outside of the acting areas of EDP Production, but that could manage to receive support from the Traditions Program for developing in the councils in their scope.
Culture as a way to preserve the collective memory
The Tradition Program envisions voluntarily supporting the most genuine traditions in popular culture, providing the recovery of certain disappearing ancestral practices. It intends, in that sense, to streamline a reflection of the culture as a way to preserve collective memory, as well as produce cultural assets and their disclosure to the new public.
The Tradition Program is destined to whichever national entity legally constituted and registered, whatever their origin, that allows to development of a project in the council encompassed by the program. This is because one of their objectives, through the appreciation of a local entity is to narrow relationships with the community.
It’s a biennial project (applications open every two years). It currently ranges 81 councils, that correspond to the areas where six electricity power plants of EDP Production (hydro and thermoelectric power plants) intervene in: Tejo Mondego, Douro, Cávado Lima, Ribatejo, Lares, and Sines. The councils that are included are listed in the Program regulation, which you can look up here.
In conclusion, this program aims to ease the passage of knowledge over generational traditions, by preventing their disappearance, while simultaneously, offering value to the population’s self-worth.
