WOOL 
Lara Seixo RodriguesPT
TALK 01
“How do these urban expressions work in low-density territories and rural contexts?”
14th of JUNE
9h45 > 11h45
CIEC – Centro de Inovação Empresarial da Covilhã _ Rua António Angusto Aguiar, 60
Co-founder of WOOL | Covilhã Arte Urbana (PT)
She is proud to be from the mountains and reveals that the fact that she grew up between two cultures and customs alone justifies the constant curiosity that drives her. This led her to Lisbon and Barcelona to study Architecture (FA-UTL and UPC-ETSAB), but it also sparked her interest in other artistic areas and intensified her lifelong interest in Urban Art. The combination of passions led to the creation of WOOL | Covilhã Arte Urbana (2011 -…) and since then a succession of other formats, geographies and audiences, examples of which are LATA 65 – Urban Art Workshop for the Elderly (2012 -…), FAZUNCHAR (Figueiró dos Vinhos, 2019 – 2023), Sebenta da Quarentena | 40 ideas to make the most of time (2020) or ESPORO | Cultural and Artistic Dissemination (2022). Throughout her career, her interest in the arts in general has always remained, mirrored in the curation and production of various initiatives, including the curation of Portuguese entourages in the internationally renowned projects TOUR PARIS 13 (France) and DJERBAHOOD (Tunisia), the curation and production of GTM – Rota Sustentada (Gaia, 2017), the exhibition Livro Transformado (Coimbra, 2021) or the curation and organization of the exhibition ATTERO by the artist Bordalo II (2017), which had more than 27,000 visitors. To manage all these facets, she founded MISTAKER MAKER | Plataforma de Intervenção Artística (2014), whose mission is to explore new paths in the production of content and the creation of artistic products that add social, cultural, tourist and/or economic value to communities and territories. She is a member of the driving force behind the Ibero-American Urban Art Network, the Central Peripheries working group and, since 2018, the Reflection Group on the Future of Portugal, made up of 45 Portuguese personalities born after 1974, with no party affiliation, in close and exclusive dialog with the President of the Republic, Professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Above all, she is passionate about what she does.
Being the direct result of two great passions shared between Lara Seixo Rodrigues, Pedro Seixo Rodrigues and Elisabet Carceller, one for Graffiti / Street Art and other for Covilhã and its history closely related with the textile industry, WOOL | Covilhã Urban Art, appeared in 2011 as the first event with these characteristics in Portugal.
Since its foundation, WOOL set out to use several walls in the city historic center as a support for interventions of urban artists, with the aim of:
– pay tribute to the history of this city as a way of rediscovering its identity;
– awake the interest of the community for Culture and Contemporary Art;
– rehabilitate neglected urban areas through Art, making it accessible to all, in a clear act of democratization of Art and informal learning
– involve the community in all interventions and actions, so that they take them as their own, as their heritage
These goals promoted the design of a specific and unique format and modus operandi, that made possible (and still does) to introduce these new expressions of Contemporary Art as tools capable of great social, cultural, economic and urban transformations in a community.