Regenerative Landscapes is a research-creation initiative led by Instituto Terra e Memoria (ITM) in the rural and peri-rural territory of Mação, Portugal, a region deeply affected by recurring wildfires and long-term demographic decline. Conceived within the Transformative Territories programme (2025–2026), the project investigates how artistic practices can support ecological, social, and affective regeneration in contexts of environmental vulnerability.
Rather than proposing predefined solutions, the project adopts an open and adaptive methodology grounded in listening, immersion, and collective inquiry. Artists, residents, researchers, civic organisations, schools, and municipal actors collaborate to develop new forms of attention toward the territory and its living systems. Artistic practice functions as a mediating device, allowing scientific knowledge, lived experience, memory, and emotion to circulate and co-construct new narratives of place.
Through workshops, field practices, participatory mapping, exhibitions, and public assemblies, Regenerative Landscapes reframes damaged environments not as zones of loss alone, but as cultural landscapes of potential repair and continuity. This evaluation documents how the project generates symbolic, relational, organisational, and ecological effects, and how research-creation becomes a tool for long-term territorial care, capable of strengthening collective resilience and intergenerational responsibility.
