materiais diversos festival
The Materiais Diversos Festival fosters encounters between diverse audiences and imaginaries through the performing arts and critical thinking. Founded in Minde and expanded to Alcanena in 2013, it adopted a biennial format in 2019. Rooted in dance, the festival has broadened its scope to encompass the performing arts and emerging artistic languages, including hybrid practices. With its next edition scheduled for 2027, it continues to establish itself as a decentralised experience taking place each October across Alcanena and Minde, strengthening access to contemporary art.
Taking a stand lies at the heart of the project: a festival grounded in its territory and attentive to the world, connecting local, national and international scales through contemporary artistic creation. The question is no longer what a festival represents, but what it does in times of systemic crisis. The answer is not one of certainty, but of responsibility: to imagine a space capable of accommodating contradiction, conflict and dissent, bringing together artistic practices and diverse audiences in a shared learning process of coexisting in the present.
A festival does not resolve these tensions, but it creates the conditions for them to become visible, discussed and collectively experienced. Operating as a hyphen between political, social and aesthetic dimensions, it contributes to the emergence of collective imaginaries that challenge dominant narratives and rehearse other ways of living together, however temporary. Festivals are moments of acceleration: they condense time, intensify encounters, and bring practices, ideas and audiences into provisional alignments where the aim is not consensus, but the productive friction of differing perspectives. This hyphen allows the local and the global to coexist without one eclipsing the other.
By prioritising fewer premieres and a stronger commitment to presence, the programme focuses on small- and mid-scale international works presented in Portugal for the first time, in dialogue with artists based in the country whose work engages with urgent contemporary concerns. Through flexible formats and a strong presence in non-conventional venues, the festival creates artistic constellations that enable works to linger, resonate and generate dialogue, reinforcing its role as a platform for visibility, critical reflection and situated transformation.
Rejecting rigid disciplinary boundaries, the festival brings together dance, theatre, performance, hybrid practices, critical thought and community participation across theatres, public spaces and landscapes throughout the territory. Each October, it transforms the region into a temporary laboratory of artistic, political and social coexistence. Rooted in its local context while connected to international networks, Materiais Diversos operates as a porous organism that promotes artistic freedom, supports emerging creation, expands dialogue between audiences, and contributes to a more equitable and inclusive vision of society.
