Castelo Branco on the UNESCO Route: Candidature for UNESCO Creative Cities Network presented
The Francisco Tavares Proença Júnior Museum was yesterday the stage for the public presentation of the candidacy of Castelo Branco Municipality to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, in the category of Crafts and Popular Arts. This process should culminate with the presentation of the candidacy dossier in June 2023, with the main goal of “boosting and affirming Castelo Branco as a creative, cosmopolitan, and sustainable territory. It was clear the central role of the Castelo Branco Embroidery in the project, which intends to revitalize and leverage this iconic traditional art of the municipality.
The event counted with the interventions of Leopoldo Rodrigues, Mayor of Castelo Branco, Hélder Henriques, Deputy Mayor of Castelo Branco and Carlos Medeiros, President of IPI Consulting Network, a company that collaborates with the Municipality in the preparation of the candidacy and the associated development strategy.
As the Mayor began by highlighting: “Today is an important day, but it already reflects a work of several months, a work of acuity and great quality”. However, he stressed, “we will only finish this process when we deliver the application dossier to UNESCO, it was a commitment we made and it’s a commitment we will keep, we are not sure that this application will have the end we want, it depends on an evaluation by international experts from UNESCO, but what we are sure of is that we are making a path, a path of affirmation of the Castelo Branco Embroidery, of the creativity connected to the Embroidery and its promotion, independently of the final result, there is a path and a work that will be, without a doubt, recognized, in terms of what it represents for the valorization of the Castelo Branco Embroidery” Municipality Square – “Praça do Município
“We often talk about the Embroidery and its importance as a cultural heritage, but here is also its importance as an economic asset of the county and the region and it is also in that sense that this candidature is important. But in first place, the valorization of the patrimony, the quilts and the embroideries of Castelo Branco have centuries, it has been a know-how passed from generation to generation, improved, perfected and today it is without a doubt an identity element of our city and our region. We know the importance of embroidery, its potential, but we also know its economic importance to our county, first of all because it creates jobs through the embroiderers who are making embroidery in the county and are putting it on the market, these are the potentials we want to improve, maximize, give it dimension, not only respecting the tradition, but giving it new perspectives, new approaches”, stressed the mayor.
The mayor also announced that the Honor Committee of the Candidacy, still in formation, will be chaired by the former President of the Republic, Gen. Ramalho Eanes, who has already accepted the invitation, also counting with the adhesion of names like Comendador Joaquim Morão, Ana Abrunhosa (Minister of Territorial Cohesion), Master Manuel Cargaleiro (ceramist and painter), António Sampaio da Nóvoa (university professor and former UNESCO ambassador to Paris) among other personalities who support the ambition of Albicastrense to enter the UNESCO Creative City Network.
According to Hélder Henriques, Deputy Mayor, “we want to position our Castelo Branco embroidery, with ancestral roots, with remarkable figurative motifs, its own symbolism and the use of unique materials, in a global context, without losing its identity characteristics. The brand and product “Bordado de Castelo Branco” is, probably, our biggest flag and one of our biggest territorial assets. And we understand that it can be, if we all want it, one of the main anchors of our development. The embroidery of Castelo Branco is past, is present, but it can also be future!”, he exhorted, adding that “this is a candidacy that emerges from a triangular relation between culture, creativity and economic development”. “What is intended”, stressed the mayor who is responsible for leading the candidacy, “is to build a territory equipped with a “creative ecosystem”, an economy focused on diversity, plurality, technology, sustainability, in pedagogical models capable of promoting the integral education of the Human Being, in integrated strategies for social inclusion, urban regeneration, in short, the sustained development of this territory and those who inhabit it. It is intended to turn Castelo Branco into a city of knowledge, through an ecology of knowledge that promotes creativity and the creative and cultural industries. For this, we are all a few to fully achieve this design. Therefore, we all must be part of the solution to carry out this candidacy and all the actions directly linked to it, but mainly to, in the long term, turn Castelo Branco into a territory that is in a global network, without losing the local specificities, that allow our development”.
For Hélder Henriques, “Talent, Creativity, Integral Education, Tolerance and Dialogue are key elements for the construction of creative environments and, as such, fundamental to transform Castelo Branco into a creative city”. It was also announced the holding of an international meeting on the theme of embroidery in the world, to take place in Castelo Branco during the month of April 2023. The session that filled the Francisco Tavares Proença Júnior Museum room also counted with cultural notes of Beiroa guitar and a theatrical representation evocative of embroidery by the theater group “Sons & Ecos”.