Navalha NGO

Sustained Action

Founded in October 2018, Navalha is responsible for the ongoing cultural programming of VIC Aveiro Arts House, the former residence of the multifaceted artist Vasco Branco (1919-2014), now a creative ecosystem combining art, culture, creative tourism and heritage. Together with the artist’s family, Navalha has developed multiple actions focused on the conservation and promotion of this legacy.

The sustained cultural action developed in the territory has led to continuous invitations from the local institutions to produce artistic contents and manage cultural programming for Aveiro’s most relevant art and tech initiatives —like the International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics, Festival dos Canais and Aveiro Tech Week— having also integrated the team behind the town’s application to European Capital of Culture 2027.

Mobility in the Arts

With a clear focus on the promotion of mobility in the arts sector, Navalha has hosted and developed numerous AIR programs, many of which applied to site-specific projects, and has participated in multiple national and international cooperation programs and networks, such as Music Moves Europe, Tandem Europe, Creatour, European Heritage Days, Challenges for Cultural Heritage Management in Tourism and Culture Action Europe, having been supported by municipal, regional, national and European programs and institutions such as Creative Europe, i-Portunus Houses, MusicAIRE, MitOst e.V., Bosch Alumni Foundation, Direcção Geral das Artes, PNA – Programa Nacional das Artes, Garantir Cultura, Direcção Regional de Cultura do Centro and Municipality of Aveiro.

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Participation and Decentralisation

Art can and should play a fundamental role in society and in everyday life. We envision a civil society where everyone may play a shared and active role towards a sociopolitical context that is based on participation, freedom of speech and artistic expression, which we consider to be fundamental human rights.

While curating cultural programming away from Portugal’s main urban centres and developing participatory arts initiatives in peripheral areas — like Re_Emergir, a community-driven project produced at the former mining village of Borralha, Montalegre— we believe capacity-building programs to ultimately produce the most optimised and lasting impact on local and neighbouring communities. Such was the case with the international seminar Break in Case of Emergency, which invited to Aveiro twenty-five renowned speakers from organisations like Bandcamp, Wired, Nina Tune, MTF, Arda Music Academy, AMAEI and Antena3 to discuss the present and future of the independent music industry.

  

Digging Tunnels

Although we make extensive daily use of digital tools, we strongly believe in togetherness and in the human character of culture. In contrast to hollow networking, we propose digging cultural tunnels as a metaphor for generating and preserving deeper relations amongst projects, spaces, institutions and individuals.

Seeking to establish sustainable collaborative mechanisms between cultural agents, institutions, creative businesses and other relevant actors, Navalha has continuously established and developed partnerships with national and international organisations, such as MAMM – Museum of Modern Art Museum Medellín (CO), Plateaux Foundation (PL), Ecoopera (ES), Canal 180, OSSO, GrETUA and INET-md — Ethnomusicology Institute at Aveiro University, amongst many others.

  

The Future of Tradition

While shaping new, exciting projects, such as the Aveiro Arts Map, which will integrate Aveiro’s cultural venues, collectives and creative businesses—, a series of reproductions of Vasco Branco’s ceramic works by local ceramists, and the ongoing program IN LOCO, dedicated to exploring strategies and techniques of live performance in electronic and exploratory music —, Navalha proposes to keep combining legacy and experimentation within the local and global contexts, in order to promote awareness, accessibility, mobility, togetherness, reflection, participation, decentralisation and freedom of expression in the arts and culture sectors.