Heritage in feast! Feast of the Crosses (Festa das Cruzes), in Barcelos. An opportunity for young ones from Portugal to spend the day getting to know better the local religious traditions, the pottery community and the sounds of ceramics.
The latest April session of EU-LAC-Museums Youth Exchange Programme, in Portugal, that gather the groups from the 3 communities, was held in Barcelos, where the participants were welcomed by the local members of the pottery community team. On that day, Barcelos was holding the Festival of the Crosses, a secular traditional celebration. Heritage was in feast!
As it was still early in the morning, and in order to elevate the spirits of the participants, the groups were received at the building of the Musical Band of Oliveira (http://www.bmoliveira.com/), founded in 1782 and where two young ones learn how to be musicians, with a home-made snack prepared by the youngsters, with cakes of traditional recipes, and with some help from their community.
Afterwards, a local pottery atelier was visited. Being also a musician, the potter reintroduced the production of musical instruments into the community. He made, from scratch, an ocarina and showed what other instruments could be created out of the clay, an abundant resource in the region, used since millennia.
After this inspirational visit, all returned to the building of the Band, in Oliveira parish, where a concert solely based on ceramic instruments was held by young people of several ages, including two of the participants in the Youth Exchange Programme.
After lunch together in the city of Barcelos, the whole group spent the afternoon at the Pottery Museum, where an exhibition devoted to potter Júlia Côta and her family was explored. Stories were told, documentaries on how objects were made in old times were watched and discussed how life was, compared to nowadays’.
The young ones were challenged to create a total of three objects out of clay: one inspired on the religious tradition in celebration, another whatever object they wished to create using a modern potter's wheel and one related to their hand/footprint, trying to correlate with the Costa Rica Community of S. Vicente and the dinosaurs’ footprints, present in the Scottish Island of Skye.
At the end of the day, the young ones toured the city full of people, enjoying the spirit, decorations and activities, sounds and smells, tasted the local sweets and had fun at the feast.