The meeting "Palmela é Música” (Palmela is Music), held on October 12th at Cineteatro S. João, in Palmela, publicly marked the beginning of Palmela’s application as a UNESCO’s Creative City of Music, which is due to happen in 2019. The initiative, promoted by the Municipality, brought together several cultural and artistic agents of the county, united for a participated and shared process, in the hope that many others will also join in over the coming months.
UNESCO's Creative Cities Network was created in 2004 in order to promote cooperation between cities that identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable development, and it currently integrates 180 cities from 72 countries. In Portugal, five cities are already part of this network: Amarante, Braga, Barcelos, Idanha-a-Nova and Óbidos.
Palmela's application as a UNESCO’s Creative City, which will be submitted in 2019, opens the prospect of creating a long term plan for the development of music. The Municipality and the cultural and artistic agents are already working on the construction of a four-year plan of action (2019-2023), which will integrate the musical programme that is already a reference within the county, along with a set of other proposals.
The purposes of the application are: to emphasize music as a means of local promotion and development; to promote research in various musical areas; to map music in the territory; to create an inventory of repertoires and documents; to invest on infrastructures and create accessibilities; to identify and promote relationships between musical genres and between music and other cultural demonstrations; to encourage the interaction between formal and non-formal education and musical projects; to foster musical education and a taste for music, as well as a regular musical programming; to turn Palmela into a destination for experiences around music, among others.
In addition to the Municipality and the cultural and artistic agents, other partners will collaborate in the pursuit of these objectives, namely Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Associação da Música Portuguesa a Gostar dela Própria, among other institutions and individuals.
“We want our application to be a compromise.”.
“This application will not aim at just attaining a mere certification. More than that, we want it to be a compromise", Álvaro Balseiro Amaro, the Mayor of the Municipality stated. For him, this project represents, above all, the" assumption of a strategy that is shared with the cultural and artistic agents aiming at the promotion of music", with the intention of "using music as a means to give Palmela’s heritage a greater relevance". Álvaro Balseiro Amaro recalled that "this is not an application in order to get financing". Still, he believes that "the recognition it will generate will be something invaluable".
At the Meeting, there was also time for debate and for the participants to share the pleasure of integrating the whole process and recognize networking and sharing as an added value.
Until the end of November, cultural and artistic agents will be able to present their proposals and contributions to the plan of action. In the meantime, a new meeting and sectoral meetings are due to take place in early 2019. It is our goal to maintain regular meetings and enable other partners to join the process at any time.