A new electronic repository has been launched to “safeguard, recognise and advertise Portuguese handmade products”. As component of a broader cultural programme, the Saber Fazer (Know How) system is made as an ongoing job, which, over the decades, will compile and share facts about all common Portuguese arts and crafts and the country’s artisans.
The electronic repository is portion of the Saber Fazer programme, declared in July 2019 by the then Minister of Lifestyle, Graça Fonseca, in partnership with the governmental locations of Financial state, Tourism and Labour, to affirm regular craft production as “a dynamic, impressive and sustainable sector”.
Amongst the programme’s initial measures, the Saber Fazer repository was made to gather and disseminate expertise about regular craft manufacturing through a digital platform.
Obtainable at www.programasaberfazer.gov.pt, the repository organises, describes and offers entry to information about the artisans, purely natural elements and systems that change them, as very well as destinations wherever any person can gain much more information about these techniques, these kinds of as museums, establishments, workshops and interpretive centres.
The job will involve mapping and characterising every single standard artwork in Portugal. It is “a Herculean do the job of amassing dispersed data, from metropolis councils, craft centres, museums, universities” carried out by the Directorate-Common for Arts (DGArtes), clarifies the Normal Director of Arts, Américo Rodrigues. It is a operate in development. “From right now onwards, it will not end. For years and several years to arrive, we will be feeding the system, not minimum because there is an invitation on the web-site for individuals to participate”, suggests Rodrigues.
Designed as a user-helpful site, the system is simple to navigate, enabling customers to uncover info speedily. The contents are introduced in accessible language with various amounts of fascination and depth on each and every matter, collectively with stunning pictures depicting every craft, interesting to readers of all ages.
The notion is to endorse the crafts as modern routines and for the system to turn into a reference for Portuguese arts and crafts, building craft solutions and providers much more obtainable.
In excess of the generations, crafts have survived and thrived thanks to awareness sharing, as masters handed down and taught their techniques to their apprentices. With lots of of these crafts at threat of disappearing, the platform will come to give these trades a strengthen, offering everyone the risk to find out about crafts and tactics online or to find stay workshops and programs.
The Saber Fazer repository performs “like a huge atlas” that maps the existence of artisans and artists of regular arts and crafts all over the nation, with interactive maps, photo galleries and texts about each and every exercise.
The repository also features the Saber Fazer Routes, a choice of thematic routes focused to a particular art or craft. These consist of black clay pottery, wicker basketry, cordgrass weaving, tinwork, wooden home furniture creating and wool weaving. Each individual route is stated in detail in downloadable PDFs that includes details about the art or craft, in which it is practised today and the place it can be learnt.
With no starting up or ending factors, the routes make it possible for everyone to make their journey as a result of Portuguese arts and crafts. Every stage on the route corresponds to a put of knowledge and practice, forming a dwelling network of web pages to obtain, uncover or discover about these competencies.
The challenge is vital for the sector, as it values the social, cultural and economic dimensions of arts and crafts. It is a resource that will reflect the get the job done carried out by the Ministry of Culture and its associates, who have collected, organised, manufactured and shared expertise on these procedures, neighborhood brokers and their raw components, underlining their relevance as tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
The mission, notes Américo Rodrigues, is to “disseminate information about these techniques, about common arts and crafts” and assistance folks uncover artisans and workshops throughout the nation.