Great Meeting of the Museum in the Village
SAMP will intertwine creations, share reflections, and deepen connections at the Great Meeting “Museum in the Village,” on March 1, 2023 (Wednesday), at 3:00 PM, at Teatro José Lúcio da Silva (TJLS). This special celebration will bring together, for the first time, all the communities, museums, municipalities, and partners of the project, in the same space, for a moment of cultural sharing.
In this gathering of territorial unity, we will witness the place and space of art in the community, which, by covering more than 40,000 km, brought together communities and museums from the 26 municipalities integrated into the Culture Network, with approximately 130 sessions ranging from exhibitions to artistic performances, involving more than 500 people. This cultural exchange between the regions of Leiria, Médio Tejo, and Oeste resulted in the participation of people, mostly over 65 years old. Participants welcomed a museum piece into their community, seeing their memories and the history of their villages transformed into art by themselves. The collaboration of various partners, numerous museum professionals, municipal and associative representatives, was essential for the temporarily loaned collections from the 13 museums to give rise to 13 collective works.
Together, we will celebrate the result of the collective work developed throughout the project, in an event that will represent each village and each museum through a show, a documentary, and an exhibition.
The documentary “Museum in the Village” presents the close relationships created between museums and villages over almost three years. The transport and presentation of museum collections in villages far from urban centers provided numerous moments of encounters through cultural similarities and differences. The villages reciprocated by creating a new collective work and presenting it in their respective museums. In this film developed by the Casota Collective, there are records of various artistic languages and creativity that emerged hand in hand with music, focusing on the accounts of those who brought the project to life: the communities, museums, professionals, and teams involved.
The exhibition promises to be interactive, innovative, and representative of the soul and voice of each village. “On the other side of the line” is an artistic installation that invites visitors to learn about the Museum in the Village project through images and stories from each community. Among the various drawn lines, the various routes between museums and villages are identified—roads and paths that unite professionals, communities, and teams—lines that allowed the project to reach various people.
This celebratory element will also provide a new moment of collective creation through the on-site characterization of the 14th work—an ephemeral and representative piece of all the links and experiences lived during the project. The exhibition also introduces some of the works that were loaned by museums during the project, through the use of Virtual Reality Glasses, providing an immersive experience that also brings each museum to Leiria.
In this way, we mark the achievement of ambitious goals, as well as a milestone with new horizons where, together, we will plant new goals, transforming art into an invitation for meetings and sharing.
The “Museum in the Village” project is promoted by SAMP, co-financed by PO ISE – Portugal 2020, through the Social Innovation Portugal Initiative, and has the Municipality of Leiria as a Social Investor, along with the Culture Network as a partner that brings together Museums, Municipalities, Parish Councils, Associations, and Institutions from the 26 Municipalities in the network. It also has the support of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, the Union of Parishes of Leiria, Pousos, Barreira, and Cortes, among many others who have joined this creative and innovative initiative.
