The Great Succession

The Great Succession

Location of activities and scope

Cabeceiras de Basto and Porto, Portugal

Portugal – Festival animation

 

Executive Summary

The project will engage 150 young people (5-18 yo) from rural inland in the making of The Great Succession: a performance piece focused on the ecological succession of terrestrial biomes and their soils. A youth orchestra leads a parade of instruments and other objects made from soil-based materials. It takes place on the last day of the Soil Festival in Serralves 2027, where 40k visitors are expected over a week. We take the festival’s target audiences as our own: families who take an interest in nature and would like to learn more about soil. Through continuous daily workshops, festival visitors can increase their soil literacy and become involved in the final performance with their own creative outputs. Beyond the performance itself, there will be an aftermovie, an official recording, and a publication with essays, the score and drawing exercises for future replications.

Motivation Statement

Soil is the basis of most advanced forms of life on earth. We humans are just but one amongst all of them. So it’s not as though it is just there, waiting for us. Soil itself contains much life in it already. It is indeed made by it. So more than the foundation for greater worlds above, soil is both the beginning and the end of most life. But, yes, as the basis of our own lives, for human societies, it also represents the possibility of resilience, sovereignty and abundance. Having enough healthy soil to grow on is the preliminary step for freedom, health and belonging. Perhaps the beauty of all of this, a message of hope, is that soil grows and regenerates, and it sometimes does so faster than most people would dare to believe! That is ecological succession in a nut-shell; the reason why nothing really is lost in the face of degradation. Nature will find a way and, for us, soil and the myriad facets and episodes of the microscopic life-forms it is made of, secures its uncontested role as the main character. A collective one nonetheless.

 

Sub-project objectives

To capacitate our own team of youth art facilitators in the basics of soil science in order to enable them to pass on this knowledge to any engaged students in the context of artistic practice.

To involve students from 5 to 18 years old, already engaged in regular artistic practices, in activities dedicated to the ecology of soil life, in order to increase their soil literacy and awareness.

To engage audience members at the Soil Festival at Serralves (Porto, Portugal) in 2027 in daily workshops focused on soil literacy and awareness.

To perform “The Great Succession” with around 150 arts and music at Soil Festival in Serralves 2027; with room for participating audiences who, through participating in the week’s workshops, decided to join the final event, too.

To produce a promotional aftermovie, presenting the piece (with footage and recordings from the festival’s final performance as well as rehearsals) in order to open up interest from different audiences on the piece itself and the theme as well.

To produce an official recording of “The Great Succession” and to publish an album both digital and physical with it.

To produce a final publication containing: the score for “The Great Succession”, which will be edited as so to be inclusive of musicians anywhere with different skills and backgrounds; a written piece based on a set of instructions which leads the reader through a discovery of soil live through guided drawing; and an accompanying text on the ecological succession of biomes and their soils, which intersects both the music and the drawing parts, doubling as commentary and instructions.

Challenges and how they will be addressed

Distance (both physical and cultural) between western civilized people of post-industrial contexts and living soil. We are closing the gap, by making young people and families experience it, as they learn and make music and visual art about it.

Expected outcomes

Anyone involved in The Great Succession should become aware that soils are alive and must be protected and regenerated, by taking conscious and concrete (and quite often simple) action on it.

Meet the Project Team

LANDRA TEQUE

Art and Science Collective.

Contact – Sara Rodrigues and Rodrigo Camacho

Instagram. 

 

LANDRA TEQUE

Agroforestry site

Youth Arts Association.

Contact – Vitor Rezende