Let us go forward with the courage of our love

In the last few days we had several lives.
After months of preparation, we received, on Friday, a visit from the comitive, made up by members of the international jury, of the European Commission and GEPAC.
From Terra Nostra Park, to Miradouro de Santa Iria, going through Arquipélago, before heading to vaga, the path was filled by people that humanise our nature and that celebrate our culture of place. In the city, the centre, the Quarteirão, Museu Carlos Machado and Coliseu Micaelense have shown the pulse and the centrality of this outermost place. In between, the bus trips were populated by all islands, which brought an ocean of emotions.
People from all over filled the day with stories of all kinds, and showed that Culture is permeable to everything. There was laughter, tears, hugs and complicity that ended in a beautiful party.

After creating a one day festival for the six people delegation, we got together on the weekend to prepare the presentation for the jury, which happened on Tuesday, in Lisbon. The team that made the bid book – António, Diana, João, Patrícia, Inês, Rita and Pedro –, the mayor of Ponta Delgada, Pedro Nascimento Cabral, and the ambassadors for Terceira and São Miguel Islands, Vanessa Canto and Joana Borges Coutinho, condensed into 45 minutes what cannot fit in any of us. We've done it by bringing something that is larger than life into a human scale, the scale of each of the ten people that were there and that found a bit of themselves in each bit of the bid book. And, since we are also this place, we were corry shearwaters, cryptomerias, sand, seeds, volcanic bombs, limpets, pineapples, mushrooms, sea water and grass. We were Human Nature.

The Ponta Delgada – Azores 2027 bid will not materialise itself. Évora is the Portuguese city that will get the title of European Capital of Culture in 2027.
The decision was made after the presentation and the visit, two of the evaluation elements, but, must of all, based on the bid book of each city. In January, the jury will present the evaluation report of the final four cities – Ponta Delgada, Aveiro, Braga and Évora.
Our bid book will be available on our website next Friday.

The announcement of the European Capital of Culture was accompanied by important news – Portugal will promote, annually, a Portuguese Capital of Culture, a measure that supports the culture of these places, and that we praise.
This initiative will be 'inaugurated' by Ponta Delgada, Aveiro and Braga. These three cities will get the title between 2024 and 2026. After that, and from 2028 on, the title of Portuguese Capital of Culture will be an open call.
We still don't know when Ponta Delgada will be the Portuguese Capital of Culture. We also don't know how and when that decision will be made, nor what it means.
We've been getting some questions about it and it's important to clarify that the mission of this team was to create a candidacy for the European Capital of Culture. A Portuguese Capital of Culture, to which the Portuguese Government has allocated two million euros, is a different project that will be communicated and clarified, in due time, by the Municipality and the Portuguese Government.
The team is now going through a reflection process. We are processing what happened, understanding the next steps, along with the Municipality, and the way we can continue the dialogue as a legacy of this bid.  We have ongoing projects, like 9 Bairros or Hand in Hand, and we want to continue Human Academy.
We congratulate Évora for winning the title. We also congratulate Aveiro and Braga for the work developed thus far.
We thank all of those who, directly or indirectly, contributed to the construction of this bid. From the Ponta Delgada municipality, we've created, in a rare moment of archipelagic cooperation, a partnership with all the municipalities of the Azores. To all the institutions of the azores that have created partnerships and believed in them, our sincere thank you. To all the artists, cultural stakeholders, businesses, academia, and the over 1.500 people whom we talked to, we tha
nk for the generosity. Only with the contribution of everyone is it possible to build such an extensive and human project.
This bid was created by the will of a Civic Movement, of around 800 people. This mobilisation was always the candidacy's biggest strength, and will keep on being an important engine of mobilisation.
It's with that idea of union that we end the text that we didn't want to write. Because IT WAS WORTH IT! As in our bid book, we close with the words of singer, songwriter and spoken word British artist Alabaster dePlume, that played in Coliseu Micaelense in April 2022: we are ready to go forward in the courage of our love.