News | Creative Europe program funds cooperation project for the first time, coordinated by INET-md researcher

The Creative Europe program is funding, for the first time, an international cooperation project coordinated by an INET-md researcher, Helena Marinho. Named SHORES, the project will raise awareness among communities, through musical creation, of the negative impact that overuse and contamination have on lakes, rivers and oceans, in their area of interaction with the land and human beings. The work involved a visit to ECOMARE, in Ílhavo.

SHORES will explore artifacts, sounds and music associated with the spaces between water and land, to address sustainability objectives and transnational circulation, based on the perspectives of composers/sound artists and local communities. This project involves a consortium of four institutions, led by UAveiro and including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Navalha Associação Cultural (associated Portuguese partner). These partners will combine their experience in artistic research and European networks to form a platform for creation and collaboration centered on the environment. The project will promote its objectives by holding workshops and artistic residencies involving both communities and artists, generating artistic results, events, and online resources that will disseminate the project's contribution at European level, raising awareness of the problems affecting our coastlines.

Coordinated by Helena Marinho, a researcher at INET-md and a professor at the Departamento de Comunicação e Arte (DeCA), the team also includes: Ana Luísa Veloso, Paulo Maria Rodrigues, and Henrique Portovedo, all researchers at INET-md and professors at DeCA, as well as Andreia Parente, a superior technician at INET-md; Hélder Caixinha, a professor at DeCA and a member of the Digital Media and Interaction Research Center (DigiMedia).

After some initial online meetings, work began in November with a visit by the Portuguese team to ECOMARE, a unit run by UAveiro in Barra, Ílhavo, and will continue until October 2026. Throughout this period, workshops and artistic residencies are planned in the various countries where the partners are located, in addition to the development of a multimedia database, which is already available and will continue to be built.

At the end, concerts are planned and the works of the participating artists and creators will be made available.