What is it? The Project

Aldea Nova Ribeiro – Ribeira is a socio-cultural project of alliance between two territories in the provinces of Lugo and Ourense, the Ribeiro region and several municipalities that make up the Ribeira Sacra. There are two initiatives already in operation that give shape to this alliance: Sacra Experience, in the place of Pincelo, Chantada (Ribeira Sacra) and Ribeiro LandArt in Berán, in the municipality of Leiro (Ribeiro region). Project subsidised with grants to extend and diversify the cultural offer in non-urban areas Territorio Cultura.

It is a project of alliances and networks between different town councils linking villages of up to 50 inhabitants, some of them with only 6 inhabitants, and it also proposes an expanded cultural programme that connects the rural environment with the urban environment.

Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira accommodates all kinds of initiatives, from the most purely environmental projects that link Art and Science, to those that focus on small isolated communities or villages near the River Minho, and also those initiatives that serve to bring national and international agents and artists closer to these territories.

They help to promote the landscape and the tangible and intangible heritage beyond our borders, through programmed artistic residencies and other activities. All these alliances end with a valorisation of the territory and a research of its people.

We analyse their ways of life that link tradition and modernity, as well as the link between childhood/youth and our elders. It also focuses on nature, which is so important in these excessively virtual times, which are often not far removed from real life and can even cause physical and mental pathologies in adolescence.

What do we want? Objectives: Innovation and transformation

Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira was born as a project that seeks to reinforce and develop the diverse capacities of the cultural sector in order to achieve a solid fabric beyond the large urban centres and beyond the Atlantic axis, where most of the cultural events in Galicia take place.

The aim is to increase cultural activity in uninhabited territories, or those with a high level of depopulation, i.e. villages with less than 200 inhabitants. Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira is an initiative understood as an engine of change, dynamisation and social transformation.

Promote the dynamisation, modernisation and innovation of the cultural and creative sectors and agents operating in the rural environment, favouring the generation of employment, professionalisation and the creation of local, regional and national professional networks, as well as helping to achieve gender equality. Encourage cultural diversity, as well as rural-urban dialogue and exchange.

Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira takes care of the landscape and respects the territory. Places such as the Ribeira Sacra, named a Biosphere Reserve, must be cared for by all. For this reason, it will focus part of its regular programme on Environmental Workshops, Meetings and Congresses on Cultural Management in Rural Areas and on knowledge of the environment that surrounds us.

In the case of the Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira Network project, most of the Ribeiro LandArt proposals are sustainability proposals. In the case of Sacra Experience, the A Pequeña Bauhaus project is based on the creation of a sustainable brand without the use of plastic material.

The main relevance of Aldea Nova Ribeiro-Ribeira is precisely this new ruralism on which the project focuses, to provoke a movement through culture that manages to repopulate the disintegrated villages, offering quality training for its people.

The innovation of the project is to welcome the whole community without neglecting the meetings of thought and reflection on social transformation through the arts. To do cultural mediation work in the rural environment, where local and external agents discuss the need to reconnect with natural environments. Creating these new villages where the past and the future coexist, in a cultural ecosystem of networks between the communities of the territory and the new agents that mediate and participate in cultural, heritage and social projects.

To establish networks between artists, neighbours, hoteliers, farmers and winemakers of the Ribeira Sacra and Ribeiro. These benefits are seen in professional links and relationships, as well as in the promotion of local job creation.