Over the course of this year, the Guarda Rios collective has developed a series of activities in the Alviela river area: the Escola Rio project with 5th graders from schools in Alcanena and Minde, the Sediment Laboratory through a series of residencies with guest artists, the Alviela River Observatory, a public participation and river literacy project held on the Olhos de Água river beach, the ‘Between Two Weirs’ performance walk as part of the Alcanena Walking Festival and, finally, a series of public participation sessions in collaboration with Rios Livres GEOTA and ISCTE, with the aim of getting the Alviela’s communities to understand the advantages of removing obsolete barriers.

All these processes resulted in a variety of artistic objects in different media, which they now share in an exhibition in the auditorium of the Centro Ciência Viva do Alviela.

This exhibition includes the impossible meanders designed by Marta Castelo, made with paints based on pigments from soil collected in the Alviela, the ceramic objects that gave rise to the participatory performance Beber das Pedras, evoking the solid flow of a river, created in collaboration with Antónia Labaredas and João Ferro Martins, and the film Diatomáceas e Hifomicetos – parte II, a film that plays with and is inspired by the microbial life that exists in water, which was painted and drawn collaboratively by 120 students from the Alcanena and Minde schools directly onto 16mm film.

The Guarda Rios collective is a structure funded by DGArtes/Ministry of Culture, which had the support and partnership of Materiais Diversos, the Rios Livres GEOTA programme (funded by DIMFE and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) and the Municipality of Alcanena for the development of its work on the River Alviela.