'Preserving and Communicating Natural Traditions (PCoNaT): A Blueprint for Cultural Continuity and Sustainable Heritage Management' seeks to find and communicate traditional and natural knowledge, techniques and materials, ensuring their integration into future creative processes.

 

It is a research project outlined by the Product Design Department of Fine Arts Faculty, Lisbon University, to further sustainable practices.

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We want to respond to UNESCO's call for new paths of sustainable development in a more holistic way, in which the cultural and creative sectors come together to promote and support social inclusion and natural, integrative, and regenerative knowledge and practices from a historical and traditional point of view.

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We recognize the world's natural and cultural diversity and that all civilizations can contribute by facilitating a more sustainable future. 

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We stress this project's importance due to the risk of losing ancestral knowledge. The artisans and holders of this knowledge are aging, which puts their experiences and domains at risk. PCoNaT, therefore, aims to (re)know, record, and disseminate this know-how, acting as a social agent. 

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The specific objectives are to study, record, and communicate:
1. natural and traditional practices,
2. sustainable materials,
3. traditional knowledge,
4. local processes.

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Therefore, we can:

1. involve the academia with local craft communities,
2. respect, recognize, and encourage knowledge sharing and cultural exchange,
3. expand scientific, artistic, and design knowledge from the local/national to the global/international level,
4. create a sense of pride and continuity,
5. promote identities and cultural diversity.