From Fenais to Fenais: Matrix Culture of Local Development

From Fenais to Fenais

The From Fenais to Fenais: Matrix Culture of Local Development (De Fenais a Fenais: Cultura Matriz do Desenvolvimento Local) project will be developed in the northern coastal area of the island of S. Miguel - Azores, covering the municipalities of Ponta Delgada and Ribeira Grande, through the intervention in two properties in the process of being listed as of public and municipal interest, which urgently need to be conserved, safeguarded, rehabilitated and readapted.

The first property, a building dating from the 16^th century, is located in the parish of Fenais da Luz, a small coastal town in the northern part of the Ponta Delgada municipality, known as the Casa do Dízimo and it is a historically symbolic space for the community in the preservation of its collective memory.

The property will house, through a partnership agreement with the Parish Council and the Ethnographic Core Association, the Heritage and Coastal Development Knowledge Center whose main function will be to act in an articulated manner on the cultural, natural and social heritage, providing technical and scientific support to research, safeguard, valorization and recreation processes for it in the Fenais da Luz, Rabo de Peixe, Maia and Fenais da Ajuda parishes, as a statement of local identities and the strengthening of their social cohesion processes.

The second building, a school of the centenary plan of Lombinha da Maia, built in 1950, in need of a preventive conservation intervention and rehabilitation of some of its surfaces, in defense of a unique building in the history of primary education in Maia, municipality of Ribeira Grande, with an important panoramic view of the coast, whose functional readaptation will house a Cultural Incubator for Innovation and Local Entrepreneurship, in a direct partnership with the Parish Council and Casa do Povo da Maia, which aims to recover the communities old know-how, acting simultaneously as a laboratory for the identification, study, experimentation and valorization of the gastronomic heritage of São Miguel and as a space for recreation and production in order to generate competitive gains, based on the creation of inclusive small companies.

From these two properties, through a network intervention, the creation of the Community Center for the Arts and Crafts of Fishing and the Sea of Rabo de Peixe will also be sponsored, in direct partnership with the Parish Council of Rabo de Peixe and the VidAçor Association, which will house the interpretive center of maritime and fishing culture of the “people” of Rabo de Peixe, whose knowledge of fishing arts will be deepened by science, seeking useful lessons for the preservation of marine and coastal fauna.