A cultural agenda that helps to walk Coimbra

Coimbra Cultural Poster was born first as an agenda in internet and launches now maps to guide the city visitors. 

First was born as the Coimbra cultural agenda, in 2012, and now materializes in products directed to those who visited the city. The Coimbra Cultura Poster (CCP) started was a facebook page to share concerts, expositions, theater plays and expositions in the city. Almost fie years and some thousands of followers after, the dynamizers of the project launch maps and cards to take advantage of the tourism growth.  

Paulo Vale Marques, one of the initiative responsables, tells to PÚBLICO that the CCP “started to be a page to friends”. The page to a nearest circle grow “organically”, that is, with sponsored publications, and has actually more than 16 thousands of followers. 

One of the explications to the accession may be the lack of coverage of the agendas of official entities. Paula Vale Marques affirms that still tried to get in touch with the county, but the City Hall answered that already had the Agenda7, a partnership project between the City Hall and the University of Coimbra that, despite having more than 400 entities in the “partners” list it doesn’t traduces in cultural activity in the city. 

In spite of living the past three years in Lisboa, Paula always assured the actualization of the page Coimbra Cultural Postar without any financial reward, until start thinking in ab “way to monetize it”. 

So she challenged Ana Fróis, architect and illustrator to create materials that framed themselves with the page. From that work flourished city maps, cards and cloth bags. 

One of the objectives is to take advantage of the tourism growth. “We noticed that Coimbra has more people, not only foreign tourists, but also Portuguese”, affirms the responsible, who understands that the CCP materials are a way to “make the city more attractive, more interesting” to those who visit it. 

In the product developing fase they noticed a certain absence of materials out of the typical map distributed in the touristic circles. “There is the county map but not alternative trails and the cards are from old times”, they said. 

The bilingual CCP maps show not only the city street, but also propose ways to go through them. For now, in the launch date, it’s available a two-days tour suggestion through Coimbra, that stars in the left margin of the Mondego River and ends in the right one. A map with gardens is still stitched and others are in the gutter, one that follows the marks left by literature in the city and another by unique buildings.

Source: PÚBLICO