The rural areas of Portugal seem to be characterized from loss of a common vibrate identity. This situation appears as a result of aging population, big distance mobilities, difficulties in mobilities and changes in everyday life that happened the last decades.
At the same time areas in rural Portugal have a rich background connected with music traditions, in parallel these traditions were also connected with an energetic type of everyday life style, which as it was already described seems that the areas lack nowadays.
What if the solution for the existing problems can be found in music gatherings? This master thesis tries to investigate issues of identity in connection with music, but also matters of mobilities in rural. The project, as case study, examines a rural area in Portugal, between the municipalities of Pombal and Ansião. This region is located geographically between Lisbon and Oporto. The aim of the thesis is to develop a system of communities, with their centres, which will promote solutions for the everyday mobilities as a way of gathering, with final goal to construct a common local identity with the help of music.
The strategy of the project is divided in three different steps that are in chronological order. Additionally the project works in four different scales. The digital scale, the big scale (stretch of 20km), which shows the connection of all the rural areas with the close towns. The middle scale (areas in 3km radius), which shows the range of the proposed communities and the connection of the suburban communities with the centres. Lastly the small scale shows how the centres of the communities are organized, how they are integrated in the community, what events can host and also what affordances they have, by presenting a design of these centres.