Idanha-a-Velha · Biocultural Regeneration · Storying Place
Idanha-à-Vida
From restoring a 1600 ha land to belonging to place.
We were asked to help a team work better together. That alignment grew from exploring Idanha’s unique vocation as a living place and engaging local stakeholders around its future.
Seven years in, Idanha-à-Vida had been working to restore its 1600 ha landscape and had brought together a growing community around the place. Based around the historic village of Idanha-a-Velha — a place with millennia of history, particularly known for its Roman heritage — the project had reached a limit shared with other similar ambitious projects: increased complexity, lack of shared language, and the pressure to become financially viable.
We supported the team through a process of Storying Place. Being in the field was the ground where a new shared understanding of the project — and with it, internal alignment — started to emerge. Over six months the team learned to read Idanha-a-Velha — its geology, its water, its oscillation between prosperity and abandonment — and to connect with the different people who had watched the stories unfolding over time.
Through this the team realized that the project’s own viability was inseparable from that of the village. People and organizations came together to share different perspectives and aspirations for the future of the place, opening a process towards a shared vision. It was the first move towards building a more connected local network of stakeholders. Idanha-a-Velha stopped being a territory the project sought to restore and became a place the project understood itself to belong to.