Walk & Talk Azores - urban art festival in the Azores

WALK&TALK, the first urban art festival in the Azores, has been hitting the streets of Ponta Delgada, in São Miguel Island, since the 30th of July and until 14th of August, with interventions from 30 Portuguese and international artists. The Festival proposes the reflection about the dichotomy surrounding public/space, challenging artists and the local population to contribute in the transformation of this insular capital into an open air museum, global and where all can participate and communicate.

Mobilization and Contribution are the strong words and goals of Walk&Talk Azores, where the festival aims to re-invent the city, affirming Ponta Delgada as a dynamic centre in the Portuguese street art movement, while positioning the city in the Autonomous Region of the Azores as a multidisciplinary and contemporary cultural art stage. The movement wants to glorify the city and the whole region, exalting its architectural and cultural elements, adding new details to its identity with urban art interventions.

[in Portuguese, and some English]

Walk&talk Azores found it’s main support in the Regional Youth Council (Direcção Regional da Juventude), but it was also able to gather numerous public and private partners, amongst corporations and citizens of the region that have offered their services and spaces to the movement causes.

The activities programmed involve the creation of a street-art gallery throughout the city of Ponta Delgada, a privileged art stage, where the public can follow the evolution of the works and contact directly with the artists. Besides these interventions in the public space, Walk&Talk also includes in its programme a collective exhibition, workshops and thematic meetings, destined to involve the local population in this participative and collaborative movement, which started the Festival.

The local proverb “Muros brancos, povo mudo” (White walls, muted society) is an example of the reality that Walk&Talk want to change: we want walls with color and a pro-active society, which motivates interaction and respect with what surrounds us, highlighting urban art as an intrinsically contemporary form of expression, but with little representation in peripheral and insular cultural contexts, like the Azores.


[in Portuguese]