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My name is Telma da Silva, I am president of the folkloric and cultural group As Lavradeiras do Vale do Sousa, which is a non-profit association for the organization of events in the cultural perspective. Through these associations I organize several festivals, however it is important to highlight the organization of the national and sometimes international folk festival held annually. What I do as functions is the selection of the groups that participate in these festivals that we always try to be from different regions of the country for greater ethnographic diversity to provide to the public and internationally also when we seek a group most representative of a particular region of the country. country of origin. It is a festival that involves a large logistics, financial resources are scarce and are reduced to funds that we can autonomously obtain through the organization of parallel activities, the help of the local authority and financially, find partners and sponsors to We can involve entities outside the group to achieve our goals.

We are talking about a festival that has been going on since 1982 and initially we had always been aware of the date because we realized that it interfered with the adhesion of the public and the dates of the environment where we are inserted so as not to disperse our audience so we always organized between the end of July and August and year after year we get more public, younger atrais and always try to put something new to break the normal and conventional ethnographic pattern in order to attract the youth. We do themed festivals where the participating groups are not just singing and dancing but also looking for ethnographic representations and theatricalizing them on stage and in fact we see a greater impact on the audience than the conventional festival and we managed to ensure greater dynamics, turnout events and attracting the attention of the public, especially young people to these themes.

In the direction of the group to be able to organize the event with a clear objective, we seek very much the basis of what is the mission of the group that is an association that works essentially for the community and to involve the local community and that is where we work. The whole event is designed to provide the active participation of the community in which we operate and bring some newness and cultural content that allows us to broaden horizons and knowledge through our activities. We are essentially inspired by the local community to organize this event and think it for these people.

In the future we think not only at the level of our association we want to understand without misrepresenting our essence and the preservation of material and immaterial heritage in what way we can take this content and adapt to the evolution of technology, social evolution. We need to make an adaptation to these themes. It is important to have the ability to evolve in line with social evolution using computer tools and technological means to capture people's attention. We want to get a little out of the way of folklore festivals and always put a theme for example and where the groups involved can always represent for example a year being the linen cycle where all the participating groups have to recreate a phase of the linen cycle in the next year recreate the corn or bread cycle.

The level of differentiation of our folk festival is really the people. This event format is not new both nationally and internationally but what makes the difference is the people and the community.

Country

Portugal

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