Amazon-based organization facilitates access to grants and sponsorships for local populations; its goal is to connect cultural agents with territorial defense in times of climate change

“Regatão” is what the people of the Amazon call the boat that travels from community to community, trading goods, buying forest products and selling food, personal hygiene and cleaning supplies, as well as building materials and electronics — just about anything you can imagine.

Regatão is also the name of the institute created to strengthen culture in the communities of Alter do Chão, one of the most beautiful and vibrant regions of Pará. Carimbó musicians, artisans, folklorists, float builders, dancers, choreographers, musicians, audiovisual producers, actors… The tourist destination known for its nature is also brimming with creativity.

“Here, everyone has some kind of artistic or cultural activity, from the carpenter who crafts handmade goods to the fisherman who plays carimbó, and the farmer who composes music. There are people who create carnival floats, weave straw crafts, and build instruments from organic forest materials,” says cultural producer Zek Nascimento.

Alter do Chão

Zek is from Belém do Pará. He and his partner Marlena Soares, who is from the riverside community of Juruti, met in Alter do Chão years ago and created the Festival dos Rios during the pandemic — a multicultural event to celebrate the region’s diverse popular cultural expressions.

The festival brought together iconic Amazonian singers like Dona Onete and David Assayag with local artists. With support from incentive laws and backing from Natura, the festival was a success. So much so that the pair developed the idea further and invited other local cultural agents to co-found the Regatão Amazônia Institute.

“After the festival, we saw the impact on the communities — many very positive — in boosting people’s self-esteem and showing them their cultural identity being valued in a rich program. But we also saw that the local scene, the cultural ecosystem of the territory, still needed more foundational work,” says Zek, who now serves as one of the institute’s directors.

“We realized it wasn’t enough to have access to brands, funding, and grants to pull off a big project or festival, while hundreds of long-standing, authentic cultural expressions in the community had no access to resources and didn’t even see themselves as cultural agents,” he adds.

Regatão Institute

To integrate local populations into public cultural policies and elevate these cultural expressions, Zek and Marlena came up with an innovative idea: to connect cultural agents with the notion of territorial defense, contributing to the fight against climate change.

“We observed — especially Marlena, who comes from an environmental background — that many investments in climate adaptation didn’t take into account the lives and cultural identities of the communities. But since the Festival dos Rios, we’ve understood that culture plays a vital role in territorial development,” Zek explains.

Culture, therefore, is viewed by the institute as strategic in keeping people rooted in the forest. “Our motto is: living culture, protected territory.”

Protecting the Forest

The Regatão Institute works through various dynamics. The first is mapping initiatives through listening workshops. Everyone is invited: cultural masters, members of community councils, neighborhood associations, folklore groups, theater, dance and music troupes, food culture groups, grassroots media collectives, and more.

“We do this mapping and create a diagnosis to understand the challenges faced by cultural agents. From there, we begin a support process, working on their self-esteem so they can recognize their own power. Then, we co-develop the projects with them,” says Zek.

The Regatão Institute also offers a variety of training programs, tailored to the needs of each group—from courses on how to create a budget, timelines, and activity spreadsheets, to ways of tracking project implementation.

Tradition and Climate Change

For the future, according to Zek, the expectation is to create a common fund for all supported projects to reduce bureaucratic barriers.

“Families who make crafts, for example, collect straw from the forest. How do you calculate that cost? You can’t issue a receipt for an activity like that. So we want to make funding more flexible so communities can focus on what really matters.”

Last year, the Institute partnered with Farm, a clothing brand known for its tropical prints. Regatão Institute was invited by the brand’s social responsibility team to help create a grant program specifically for Amazonian organizations.

The project, called Refarm Cria, received a half million reais. Instituto Regatão used its experience to select 20 collectives across the nine states of the Legal Amazon. The goal was to support cultural actions that could generate a positive environmental impact. Each project received R$25,000 to develop their initiatives.

“For many associations, it was the first time they received funding to do better than what they’ve been doing for years. This could be replicated in other places—similar initiatives could impact many more people,” Zek concludes.

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Learn more about the Regatão Amazônia Institute on their website and follow them on Instagram and LinkedIn.