Idanha a Velha · Biocultural restoration project
Idanha-à-Vida
From restoring a place of 1600 ha to belonging to it.
We were asked to help a team work better together. What was actually in the way was that the team believed it was the centre.
Seven years in, Idanha-à-Vida had restored land and grown community in a village of Roman times, but it had reached a limit shared with similar ambitious projects: increased complexity, lack of shared language, and the pressure to become financially viable.
We supported the team through a process of Storying Place. Being in the field was the ground where internal alignment also started to happen. Over six months the team learned to read Idanha-a-Velha — its geology, its water, its oscillation between prosperity and abandonment — and to connect with the different people who had watched the stories unfolding over time.
Through this the team realised that the project’s own viability was inseparable from that of the village. People and organizations gathered to imagine a shared future together. It was the first move to form a local stakeholder guild. Idanha-a-Velha stopped being the territory which the project was restoring to become the place the project belongs to.