A huge community of foreigners and locals that work together, move social causes, do sports together, invest in the island and create new jobs on Madeira is quite known outside of Portugal, even though the group is a little older than two years. Many international magazines, including Lonely Planet, have covered the phenomenon. It’s cool to be a part of this community, and everyone wants to be friends with Madeira Fitness Friends.
The story of these lovely community called Madeira Friends is part of a project we had with eight partners and four countries called “My Soft City- From fleneur to entrepreneur” and soon will be available in an e-book.
As their friends we took an initiative from them and we cleaned the beach on 17th of June.
So, last Saturday was a productive day, a good action followed by a beautiful performance.
And, here is our story.
Our ART Residency welcomed and hosted its first residents from June 1st to June 17th, a group of talented Bulgarian musicians: singers, actors, and dancers. During more than two weeks, they had the opportunity to prepare a special artistic show/performance, with assistance by the artist with synesthesia Bri, and of course when they were not practicing, they had the time to discover Madeira Island.
Basically, at the very same time, ARThubMadeira also received a group of Spanish and Greeks social workers, part of the nARTure project.
In order to share a fun but useful and important moment together, our team inspired by Madeira Friends beach clean-ups which we already participated on, organized a beach cleaning on Saturday June 17th with the Bulgarian group and the social workers, for the purpose of doing a noble action after the storm Oscar, with smiling and friendly faces.
After having provided ourselves like experts with bags and gloves, we went to the beach in Funchal, and started to clean.
Broken glass bottles, plastic bags, or even cigarettes, we took everything we found.
1h30 after, we were meeting together again to put every trash bag to the separated bins.
This action enabled us to share a moment together, and to do something good to our environment.
To close this beautiful adventure, the Bulgarian group performed for the last time at our Art Food Corner, and many people, locals, and tourists, enjoyed it. With a white canvas behind the performers, the other members of the group were using colors to express their feeling with the song. This idea comes from Bri who wanted them to connect this performance with art, and they created a beautiful, original, and unique painting (picture below).
So yes, we can qualify this day as a sustainable, fun, and artistic!
