The anthropocene concept in known as a geological concept but today it has to be seen as a prismatic concept that involves economy and social issues, besides the environmental ones. With these projects, Verão Azul will invite artists to create projects that have a connection with this concept, involving different communities in its process and input that will give them voice and empowerment in the territory.

It will take place in the south of Portugal, in Faro, Loulé and Lagos and its environments and perip

The south of Portugal is the most touristic region in the country because of the nice weather, the beautiful beaches and landscape. During high season, most of the population is focused in earning the money that they can’t do during wintertime. The positive side has a negative side: housing problem, something that the Algarvians have learned to live with over the past 40 years and, at the same time, an extreme dry, alongside with the existence of more than 30 golf courses. The region has been changing to host tourists and is living the consequences of the Antrophocene. But, at the same time, a big part of the population continues to ignore these problems, since these changes are provoked by the adaptions to tourism. Capital becomes more important.

We will develop three projects that will be part of the festival program, in November 2021:
1) For the issue of nomadism within seasons, we are inviting a photographer to work with the gipsy community, involving them in showing their way of living and how they relate themselves with the problems of housing acceptance.
2) Thinking of extreme dry alongside multiple golf courses, we are inviting an artist and activist collective of plastic and visual artists to create a social activation in public space on the theme of water, after a research with the populations that deal with water in rural and urban areas.
3) In a society that can be brought to a total environmental collapse, we are inviting a theatre director to work with the local population about a possible situation of apocalypses.

We will develop several artistic residencies in different timeframes with the invited artists so that we can follow and mediate each project and reach each community. Since each of proposals are different, we will develop different methods to approach, reach, work and make each community fell comfortable to take part of each project. For each project we will have a mediator that will prepare the context according to the needs of each artist, gathering information that will allow this one to interact correctly with each community; the curator will follow all processes in order to make bridges between the artists objectives, the festival mission and the context itself.
In November 2021 the 10th edition of the festival will present the results of these collaborations.

One of the aims is that, trough these artistic projects, the different communities will be more aware of their importance in society, and of the environmental issues in their life.
We hope that our audience feels more at ease with art and understand it as a tool that can express a lot of the problems society is living. It is also our intention to leave a memory of the work done with these communities as a way of raising their self-esteem.
At the end, is our intention to draw attention, on a national level of the problems that antrophocene is highlighting but, above all, we want to empower the communities and people with whom these artists will work.

We live in a world that has been modified by Man to serve Man and in this modification we face, with increasing speed, the destruction of many natural habitats, making our planet increasingly global to serve humanity. However, the world remains an unbalanced place and, at the same time, deteriorating. The great transformations are still in the hands of a few and serve only a part of the world population. We want to draw the attention of how it is possible, through art and with activism, to discuss these issues and to call attention of how this is deteriorating also one of the basic concepts of democracy: equal opportunities to all. The festival will invite artists that will work the antrophocene in different dimensions, involving the population and adding their voices in art pieces.

We believe that art is a powerful tool to make visible the problems of society. The festival has assumed the need to talk about social issues which are important for the territory but also for the global world we live in.
Since 2018 we have been working on the antrophocene concept and in strategies of acessibility of art to people.
We believe that all people should have access to art but sometimes there is a lot of barriers to things that are not mainstream. We believe that is all a matter of education and putting populations in contact with artists will allow people to understand the work involved and to devellop a critical thinking.

Personel costs – 45.000€
Artistic fees – 39.000€
Travels – 12.400€
Lodging – 9.700€
Food – 8.600€
Production and technical costs – 10.700€
Communication, mediation and public relations – 15.000€
Admistrative costs – 2.200€

We would like to know if our practices can work in other contexts; if these projects can be viralized in other contexts