Coming soon

What a great way to close 2016! Pedro Marques, a very talented film composer and co-founder of Jump Willy gave us an incredible talk at Espiga about his very hands-on development as an artist and his great work, from music to sound mixing and then back to composition. Nicole Tsangaris, which I thank, took great photos of the event, while Joel Faria did the amazing illustration above.

We are hard at work editing the videos of the past talks, but also looking forward to continue having such great guests in 2017. We’ll be posting updates about the first couple of events in the next few days. 

In the meantime, I’d like to thank everyone who helped CreativeMornings/Porto through its rebirth in 2016: Gil and Sofia of course, for lending me the opportunity to host, but also Sally at CreativeMornings HQ for her invaluable assistance; Hugo and Inês for hosting us at Espiga and always eager to help things happen; a great team of volunteers in Luís, Joel, Filipe, Nicole, Catarina, Tiago, Duarte, the Canal 180 gang (Ola, Javier), and Mariana; all guests that have accepted our invitations and were eager to brighten our mornings: Joana Nogueira and Patrícia Rodrigues, Jorge Abade, Ana Cristina Pereira, the OpenField gang, Álvaro Domingues, Constança Araújo Amador, and Pedro Marques; and finally all attendees and regulars that have supported us with their presence:

An Happy New Year!

That Friday morning in late November the skies offered a brief relief from the week’s heavy rain, just so that CreativeMornings/Porto attendees and us volunteers could gather around Espiga’s hot coffee and tea and listen to Contança Araújo Amador’s talk about #Fantasy.

As in most events, Luís Silva greeted attendees at the door, and everyone had the breakfast offered by Espiga’s Hugo and Inês. All the while Filipe Brandão started to take photographs of the event (check the album here) and Catarina David and Javier from Canal 180 got their video gear ready.

Contança Araújo Amador is a very talented visual artist and illustrator. In her talk, she presented her work as intertwined to her life narrative, starting from her upbringing and early influences by gothic fantasy, to her later exploration of poetry and themes from nature, merged in watercolor fantasies.

After a Q&A with the attendees we gave Constança a very warm thank you for her talk and extended her our invitation to attend the next CreativeMornings/Porto. December 16th, again with Hugo and Inês’ delicious breakfast at Espiga, composer and sound designer Pedro Marques will talk about #Sound! All welcome!

Text by Eduardo Morais. Photos by Filipe Brandão. Top illustration by Joel Faria.

After September's field trip, CreativeMornings/Porto returned to Espiga in October with a great talk by Professor Álvaro Domingues, a geographer and researcher in the field of urban planning.

Hugo and Inês presented the crew, the speaker and all attendees with a rich breakfast, which in what a chilly morning included a much needed cup of tea for yours truly. Luís Silva greeted the attendees, while Filipe Brandão photographed the event and Catarina David videotaped the talk with the help of Duarte Castelo Branco.

Professor Domingues approached the monthly theme of transparency from an askew angle. Using the novel Os Transparentes by Angolan writer Ondjaki as start, Prof. Álvaro Domingues talked about his travels through Luanda, and how the city's spatial and social geography is riddled with transparencies, Ondjaki's chosen word for invisibilities. People's needs are as invisible to Angola's ruling elites, but so did most of Angola's history, including a recent thirty-year civil war, been rendered transparent. And in a stark contrast, Prof. Domingues reported how his status as a Portuguese white male (that is, one of the ex-colonizers) made him absolutely conspicuous and visible, how the desired transparency as an observer was impossible.

After a brief Q&A with the attendees we gave Professor Domingues a very warm thank you for his talk and extended him our invitation to attend the next CreativeMornings/Porto, November 25th, again with Hugo and Inês’ delicious breakfast at Espiga! Artist and illustrator Constança Araújo Amador will talk about #Fantasy! All welcome!

Text by Eduardo Morais. Photos by Filipe Brandão. Top illustrattion by Joel Faria.

Field trip! For a very special September edition of CreativeMornings about #Magic, Porto's own choice of global theme, we went to visit the OpenField Creative Lab, a colaborative studio in Porto composed by a multidisciplinary team working on a fusion of art and technology - Francisca Gonçalves, Ivo Teixeira, Nuno Alves de Carvalho, Rodrigo Carvalho e Tiago Gama Rocha. They have been producing shows like Lasers de S. João and organizing fun DIY electronics exploration workshops.

If magic is just advanced technology, as Arthur C. Clarke may have put it, we went to visit a place were a vibrant group of digital artists and technologists prepare magic.

Hugo and Inês from Espiga came by and brought a great breakfast. Luís Silva welcomed attendees at the door, while Filipe Brandão started taking the photos you can see in the event's Flickr album. Catarina David and Duarte Corte-Real busily prepared their gear to record the talk, while Joel Faria opened his notebook and started to draw the proceedings. As people arrived, attendees, the OpenField crew and our group of voluntaries mingled over coffee, fruit juice, cake and sandwiches!

The time came for the talks. Ivo Teixeira introduced the team and told us a bit how such a diverse group found itself and built such an inspiring place to work together on a diverse array of projects.

Ivo, along with Francisca Gonçalves, Nuno Alves de Carvalho, Rodrigo Carvalho proceeded to present short talks on their wide array of projects, from Web work for a local beer brewery, to DIY electronics and visuals workshops, from motion controlled art installations and a painting machine to a public interactive laser show in the city's main square. How did they come with their ideas? What challenges made them change and iterate? What did work? What didn't? Where do you rent lasers?...

Before an interested audience, where José Raimundo could be found also drawing the presenters, Tiago Gama Rocha offered some final thoughts and conclusions. The takeaway? 

"There was no magic, there was a lot of work." 

And that is how magic is made.

See you all soon!

Text by Eduardo Morais. Photos by Filipe Brandão. Top illustrattion by Joel Faria. Bottom illustrations by José Raimundo. GIF animation shot by FIlipe Brandão and prepared by Eduardo Morais.

September is all about Magic, a theme chosen by CreativeMornings/Porto. Check out CreativeMornings’ interview with this month's illustrator Marta Madureira, and watch her 2014 talk at CM/Porto.

At CreativeMornings/Porto we’ll be visiting the pretty magical OpenField on Friday the 23rd, so don’t forget to register!

July 15th Espiga hosted CreativeMornings/Porto. Hugo and Inês once again prepared a lovely breakfast for all of us attendees to have a great start to a Friday morning. And what a great morning it was, with Ana Cristina Pereira’s talk about #Love.

Attendees were greeted by Luís Silva at the door, while Nicole Tsangaris photographed the event and Catarina David video recorded the talk, helped by Aleksandra Kucharczyk, the cheerful Canal 180 intern now leaving Porto for new adventures - thanks Aleksandra!

Ana Cristina Pereira is a writer and journalist, and presented some of the love stories she encountered, stories of love in the face of adversity: a young man, blind and with locomotion difficulties, who married a physiotherapist despite risking the loss of his disability benefits (a story with an happy end, Ana Cristina added, for the young man is an exceptional human being and was granted a doctoral scholarship); a couple living in abject poverty, both drug users in a house without electricity and running water, they made an effort to live in ‘normalcy’, scavenging discarded furniture they built a home. They still flirted and sometimes went out to have a cup of coffee somewhere else in the city, wearing shoes preciously saved for such occasions.

José Raimundo, one of the attendees, made a few drawings he was latter happy to share with us.

Ana Cristina pressed a case for humanism. She said:

“We don’t have to like everyone, we don’t have to agree with everyone, but we do have to respect everyone.”

She is worried how so much of Europe seems to be forgetting this, how the fear of the Other seems to be taking hold. Though there is no magical formula to make prejudice disappear, discussion, information, and education are much needed. As a journalist she tries to give a voice to the Other, and present them as the people, like you and me, they are. She concluded with a question to the attendees: and what can we, as citizens, do?

We can listen.

After a round of discussion we gave Ana Cristina a very warm round of applause for her amazing talk. We extended her our invitation to the next CreativeMornings/Porto.

As usual we will enjoy our holidays in August. In the meantime, you can read an essay in which Ana Cristina Pereira starts from her experience at CreativeMornings. You can also check out the videos of the past talks, as we are hard at work at preparing more videos and adding English subtitles to the talks.

CreativeMornings/Porto will return in September with a strong dose of #Magic! Stay tuned!

June 17th CreativeMornings/Porto returned to the lovely Espiga for a talk about #Broken by visual artist Jorge Abade. 

Hugo and Inês presented the crew, the speaker and all attendees with a rich breakfast and, in a time of year days get long and hot, a much need cup of coffee. As last month, attendees were greeted by Luís Silva at the door, while Filipe Brandão photographed the event, and Catarina David video recorded the talk, with help by Alexandra and Alexandra from Canal 180!

In an intimate roundtable conversation, Jorge Abade started by presenting the difficulty with discussing ‘Broken’: what does it mean? There is no portuguese word that captures the richness of meanings one can pin to that term, while tentative translations can get completely different meanings in english. ‘Broken’ is, in a way, broken.

Jorge then dove into the ways ‘brokenness’ became integral to Art throughout History: the Sphinx wouldn’t be the same with a nose, classical paintings seem to become unlike themselves after restoration efforts, Duchamp’s ‘ready-mades’ and much of modern art that came after embraces the brokenness found in accidents and incidents. 

Attendees joined in this conversation, and a people pitched in their thoughts everyone moved toward an understanding of the pieces brought by Abade and set at the center of the table.

The incident that gave way to Incident, for instance, was the artist realizing he had not enough resin as he was filling a mold. What would’ve been a discarded model of half an apple became an idea for molten apple, realized thought the painstaking process of painting a realistic surface. The other picture on display, arose after the artist decided to crop the only part of the canvas he was happy with - Jorge Abade broke the picture in order to make it whole.

After more participation by the attendees we gave Jorge a very warm thank you for his amazing talk. We extended him our invitation to the next CreativeMornings/Porto July 15th, again with Hugo and Inês’ delicious breakfast at Espiga! Journalist, essayist and playright Ana Cristina Pereira will talk about Love! Everyone’s welcome!

What a great return! The lovely Espiga once again hosted CreativeMornings/Porto this last Friday, May 20th 2016, with Joana Nogueira and Patrícia Rodrigues. The young documentary filmmaking duo brought a very interesting look into their creative process and how reality is sometimes best served as... animated film.

As Joel Faria set about drafting the event's participants and Filipe Brandão snapped his first photographs, Espiga's Hugo and Inês were busy serving a great and nourishing breakfast for all atendees. Visitors arrived tired after navigating through unusual traffic in downtown Porto so early in the morning but were soon uplifted by Luís Silva's warm greeting at the reception table and by a cup of Espiga's espresso.

Being the month of CreativeMornings/Porto third anniversary, everyone also enjoyed these delicious and sweet cupcakes by Piquenique, further lifting everyone's spirits.

Catarina David and her friend Cláudia arrived and setup up their video gear, signaling it was time. New host Eduardo Morais to made a video call to Coimbra, so that CreativeMornings/Porto founder Gil Ribeiro made a surprise appearance wishing godspeed to a new stage in the chapter's history! 

Without further ado, Eduardo introduced Joana Nogueira and Patrícia Rodrigues to the audience.

Joana and Patrícia explained how their documentary Pronto, Era Assim, arose from the duo's previous experience working in local charities. For this documentary, they spent nine months collecting the life stories of a group of seniors at a local community centre.

The speakers then invited the audience to listen to audio clips of their interviews, video excerpts of the same interviews, and said excerpts in their final animated form.

The audience was asked to debate which form seemed to convey the 'fullest' representation of reality - whether the 'dry' studio interviews, or the detailed animation; which allowed the filmmakers to include many small details provided by the interviewees as part of the set décor, the animated figures' gestures, or as part of the animated figures themselves.

Joana and Patrícia described the painstaking animation process which took a further nine months after collecting the interviews, and thus presented some 'making of' clips, striking as demonstrations of the relationship between reality and memory.

After a brief Q&A with the audience we gave Joana and Patrícia a very warm thank you for their amazing talk. We extended them our invitation to the next CreativeMornings/Porto June 17th, again with Hugo and Inês’ delicious breakfast at Espiga! 

Everyone’s welcome!

All good things come to an end at some point or another, so that new ones can emerge. Our time as organizers of CreativeMornings Porto is no exception. Sofia and I have decided to step down from behind the steering wheel of this amazing project so that others can step up to the plate and continue to make it grow and flourish.

During these last three years we have met wonderfully talented people, both as speakers and as part of the audience. We have tried to create a comfortable environment for everyone to feel welcomed and appreciated. We have invested in showcasing our local community and genius. 

Whenever we were feeling stressed or run down, a new event would come around and with it renewed energy and the hopes that our next event would be better, for us and for all of you. 

A sense of community and open-mindedness were in fact some of the most important pillars we tried to live for. 

On Friday December 11th, Sofia and I will be completing our last event as hosts of CM Porto . The event will take place where it all started, PARQUR’s home at AORP’s beautiful “palace”. Our guest? The talented Eduardo Aires from White Studio. 

WE WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU!

See you around friends,

What a beautiful, intimate event we had last September 25th at ESPIGA with the talented GUSTAVO COSTA! Thanks to everyone who contributed to a very pleasant mornings.

Gustavo Costa is a musician and entrepreneur. He is currently working on his PhD on Digital Media and working full-time at SONOSCOPIA, a cultural association he founded with friends in 2011. Gustavo graduated in Production and Music Technologies, concluded a Post Graduation course in Sonology, and completed a Masters Degree in Composition and Music Theory. He also has a professional degree in Percussion. 

Considering September’s theme, Empathy, we created name-tags for everyone with the question: What does it mean to put yourself in “someone else’s shoes”? 

and we got some interesting answers

We try to adapt our name-tags to each monthly theme so they become part of the event in a more significant way. We are very happy to see some our attendees actually collecting them!

The event began with delicious and much needed coffee right from the expresso machine, fresh bread, orange juice and amazing home-made cookies… all courtesy of ESPIGA! Thanks Hugo and Inês!

Due to few attendees and speaker’s preferences this particular event turn into a very comfortable and intimate encounter. Gustavo was very approachable, and suggested we all sat around a table instead of seating in rows of chairs in front of him (good call Gustavo).

Gustavo spoke about creative freedom. He talked honestly about his work experience, about some of the difficulties of his everyday creative atmosphere and pose some interesting questions.

Gustavo talked about some of the problems that creative people face. We all have to pay rent, or a mortgage.. we all have basic expenses and probably we all have jobs, some of which we do not enjoy, to be able to pay for those things and we constantly postpone, in favour of those paying jobs, doing other things that could be more fulfilling for us and that could eventually give us money. 

He said he is now doing what he loves, and working with talented people whose company he enjoys. 

Gustavo said that when he reached what he thought was a utopia, was something unreachable, he immediately began searching for more. I remember a phrase that said “The day I knew all the answers someone change the questions” because I agree with Gustavo… as we slowly reach the goal we had set for ourselves we are also slowly altering what we want, because our life changes, the world changes and the goal we set for a “future"may not be suitable for our future self. (but this is just me talking…)

Gustavo’s words generated a lovely discussion about music, life, challenges…

Some attendees worked doing what they loved, some others felt they had to adapt. We actually love when people take notes, because we feel that theses event actually leave a lot of food for thought. 

Now I will leave you with a little bit of what I am talking about as I close this post. Thank you very much Gustavo for your wonderful presence and for sharing with us.

(Photographs by Filipe Brandão)