Supporting a collaborative research approach about sustainable practices on portuguese musical folklore in the 21st century: the EcoMusic project

Abstract

Since 2019 and in the scope of the EcoMusic Project, a technological web-based applicational infrastructure is being developed and deployed, to support the work of a team of researchers from different research centres and scientific areas. This multidisciplinary approach studies Portuguese Musical Folklore practices in the 21st century framed by ongoing discussions about: the participation in local social/cultural life; the musical movements in connection with sustainable and ecological values; the impacts in culture ecosystems of modern tourist destinations; the impacts on declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity sites; the conflicts between creativity and market pressure and imposing trends; and the authenticity of current music festivals and related industries, and the world visions they promote and disseminate. Articulating ethnographic and fieldwork methodologies with collaborative research practices, the EcoMusic Project aims to connect its researcher’s community with musicians, practitioners, local communities, and other stakeholders. Through a common multimedia online repository with custom-built dashboards for researchers, all their fieldwork collected assets can be stored, classified with a set of descriptors, managed, and shared amid researchers and within thematic collections or geolocated contexts related to local communities. These geolocated assets within the project’s repository act like data sources to different dissemination channels, from interactive web-based maps to EcoMusic’s Mobile App maps. Being the later ones intended to promote, on a mobile device, an active and sustainable Cultural Tourism and territory exploration on selected research thematic paths. The project’s deliverables dissemination is structured through a set of channels built within the project’s website. These channels allow the exploration of the project’s multimedia assets (video, audio, photos, scores, etc) organised by the before mentioned research-related thematics or geographic contexts. This dissemination is feeding the work of other researchers, increasing the reach of the project and its knowledge production endeavours.