Project
summary
The Lands of Butterflies project recovers and values the contributions of women to the construction of rural cultural landscapes in Europe, creating new narratives from an artistic perspective.
The European project ‘LANDS OF BUTTERFLIES: recovering and transmitting women memories and footprints in the cultural heritage of rural territories’ is coordinated by La Ponte-Ecomuséu in collaboration with the Icelandic association Landsbyggðin Lifi, fél Í Landvör and the artistic French company Groupe ToNNe. The project is carried out within the framework of the European program “Creative Europe”, from July 2022 to June 2024. In this period of time, and in different phases, the three partners investigate and value through art the contributions of women to the construction of cultural landscapes in two rural areas of Europe: Santo Adriano, in Asturias (Spain) and Kópasker (Iceland).
The “Lands of Butterflies” project aims to safeguard and promote both cultural differences and the aspects that European rural societies have in common, and it does so by addressing the intangible heritage and the memory associated with women, to give greater visibility to the role they have played on the construction of rural cultural landscapes. The objective is to generate new narratives that help us better understand the present and build a sustainable future in Europe in order to face the great challenges that rural territories present today: depopulation, environmental crisis, migration, digital transformation…
Through this project, a series of workshops and meetings are held with the local population of Santo Adriano and Kópasker, working with them to recover their intangible heritage and create participatory and reflective environments in both areas. During the summer of 2023, artistic residencies are held in both territories under the coordination of the French artistic company, which culminate in a third residency in France in April 2024.
The objective of these residencies is to make the role of rural women in the past visible locally and at a European level and interpret these collective memories through art, making us reflect on the present and future of our communities. With this project we try to transform the visions of our rural communities, making the contribution of women to European landscapes more visible.