What we do

After the XX century trend of squatting houses, we bring to the XXI a new necessity: squatting rivers. By using unsustainable economic models, urban communities have been losing their rivers as a common good. It is urgent to rescue the ancient relationship between both. How to squat a river is a R&D comprehensive learning tool that aims to show how can a community redeem a river for the common good.     The river-city relationship is essential for urban development. The availability of water was always one of the decisive factors for the definitive establishment of populations. With the industrial advance, river-city relationships have changed. There is a functional separation, caused by great works of correction perpetrated to urban rivers, aggravated by the strong levels of pollution of streams and banks. If the larger rivers are now used almost exclusively for economic purposes, the smaller ones, usually extremely polluted, constitute, […]

How to squat a river

The visits continue and Quinta do Cabrinha received (and well, as always) another group of guests on the past Saturday. The Dá-te ao Condado (give yourself to the county) project, from the old J zone of Chelas, now “Bairro do Condado”, came to visit the “Outros Campeonatos” and Quinta do Cabrinha for another day of activities. Street football set the tone for the day, on a morning of rushing and gambling. Games were played between the two neighborhoods and then everyone was mixed. Street football is a way of creating links and relationships. In addition to making us look at ourselves and others within a group, playing with people we still do not know compels us to evaluate how we relate with each other.     These Saturday visits always follow the same script, and anyone who has read the other articles on any of them knows that Um Outro […]

Condado (the County) in Alcântara

Saturdays. Always Saturdays to go and to receive, meet people and ideas. This time it was the Cais Association that visited us at Quinta do Cabrinha. The plan was similar to what we like to do: receive well, make everyone feel at ease to meet and share a full day, with street football and the machines of Pietro, with Alcântara from today and from yesterday. To start, football. Street football. The Cais Association has a long history related to the modality. They were their first promoters in the country, using it as a social inclusion strategy since 2004 with great success. And they came to share the field with us, mixing people of all ages and with very different life histories, playing during one whole morning.     It is important for us, in the Outros Campeonatos, to see so much happening. The people who visit us are so different […]

CAIS at Cabrinha

The roles reversed. After two months of leaving, visiting other projects and neighborhoods spread throughout Lisbon, it is up to us to welcome all the people who have welcomed us so well. The first one to visit the “Quinta do Cabrinha” and “Outros Campeonatos” (and understood this in the scope of this project, since they had already been there and they have been missed) was the Associação Nacional de Futebol de Rua. It was a full day, sunny, that ended with that kind of tiredness that tastes good. It is comfortable to receive people we like and who immediately take away the nervous from the responsibility of being the host. The staff of the “Associação Nacional de Futebol de Rua” has the habit of putting us completely at ease and so it was. The day started with street football. Predictable? Yes. Does it make sense? Also. We have been playing […]

After going, receiving

We continue the series of partners’ articles. Since we do not want to make this a thing about ourselves, we do not have much to add to it. The words of Lisbon Sustainable Tourism are as follows:   After another tour around Lisbon with the project “Outros Campeonatos”, a phase of great importance, in our opinion, ends. Ends in order to start other phases. And we are not referring only to the visits of new friends and partners to Quinta do Cabrinha, already scheduled for the coming months, but also to other moments and initiatives that will arise with the will to continue to know and enjoy all the resources that our city has to offer. Lisbon Sustainable Tourism will always be available and will continue to work so that these and other young people (kids and adults) have access to their city, so that they can learn, know their […]

Partners’ Articles – Lisbon Sustainable Tourism

We closed with a golden key. The last scheduled visit (which in no way means the end of the tours we so much enjoy doing) of this phase of “Outros Campeonatos” was last Saturday. We visited the Dá-te ao Condado E6G project, in the Condado neighborhood, in Chelas, promoted by the Guinean Association of Social Solidarity – Aguinenso. We are already looking a bit suspicious of repeating it, but we are always so welcome. Take the Cabrinha to know new cultures, to visit points of the city that are not part of the touristic routes and meet people who, within their otherness, have points in common with us and our way of being. This is what we are always looking for with these visits. When we met with the “Dá-te ao Condado E6G” staff we were not expecting to have such an active day, honestly. As soon as they told us […]

“Outros Campeonatos” in the air

It was a great Saturday, the 3rd visit of “Outros Campeonatos”. This time we stayed near but we still walked a lot. We went to visit the Campolide Soma & Segue E6G project, being held in the neighborhoods of Liberdade and Serafina. There was street football, as usual. We got to know the activities of “Some & Segue” and we were fascinated by the music production studio and the videoclips they made. This is also why we go out, not only to get to know places, realities and new people, but to seek ideas and learn ways of thinking and acting different from ours. Looking at others helps us look at ourselves.     We had lunch in a garden with a very nice view of the Vale de Alcântara, a result of a project, similarly to ours, financed by the BIP/ZIP program.   Then we continued to Campolide, to […]

“Outros Campeonatos” with a view over the city

We continue walking through Lisbon, learning about the work of community building that is being done here and spreading street football into other places.     This time, we left Cabrinha in the direction of the city center, to visit Casa do Brasil in Lisbon, in the middle of Bairro Alto. It was Carnival, we had to make a visit, right?     We were, as always, immensely well received. Diógenes explained how the Casa do Brasil in Lisbon works, the services they provide to the community and the activities they organize. It was another opportunity to meet people who organize themselves around the common good, working for better conditions for all. We bring ideas and good energy from these meetings to keep doing what we do and improve our practices. We continued towards the Jardim do Princípe Real for a street football game in the city. We were there to […]

Outros Campeonatos roaming Lisbon

We launch here a series of articles written by the partners that dynamize with us the “Outros Campeonatos”. The idea was to diversify the type of speech produced about the project and to understand how all those involved see what we are building in Quinta do Cabrinha. These articles are also used to better understand how the partners of the Outros Campeonatos are involved in the activities promoted within the project. The plurality of points of view will help to reflect on the practices and to better build the future. We reproduce here the opinion of the “Associação Nacional de Futebol de Rua” (National Association of Street Football):   “The Associação Nacional de Futebol de Rua has as its mission to promote the social and sports methodology of street football as an innovative strategy of socio-pedagogical and cultural intervention with a view to human development and social inclusion. Since 2009, it […]

Partners Articles – National Association of Street Football

This was the first exit of the “Outros Campeonatos” (Other Championships). We planned to go playing street football in the Padre Cruz neighborhood with the Associação Nacional de Futebol de Rua (National Association of Street Football) and we went for a walk during all day. It was a heterogeneous group, which came out of Cabrinha, from small to grown up kids. O Lisbon Sustainable Tourism organized us a full day and there we went. The game was only in the afternoon but we got up early in the morning and at 9 in the morning (more or less) there was everyone next to the vans that We Hate Tourism Tours made available to lead us towards the “Moinho da Juventude” (Youth Mill). We were welcomed with open arms in Cova da Moura. The staff of Moinho showed us the neighborhood, explained to us what they are doing and the struggles […]

There are other Championships out of the Cabrinha!