Cultural Cooperative LARGO 2.0

Marta Silva is the Founder of LARGO Residências Cultural Cooperative and President of the Board for almost ten years.

Born in Porto, she graduated in Dance and later in Educational Sciences. Since then she worked in the field of arts as performer, teacher and producer in diverse socio-cultural contexts. Still in Porto, she was associated with the associativism, and co-founded the Núcleo de Experimentação Coreográfica (NEC)  and Companhia Instável. As a trainer she taught dance and was involved in art education projects in different schools.

Moved to Lisbon in 2004 where she co-founded SOU Cultural Association that later originated LARGO. The last years she has been working as a cultural manager in multiple social intervention projects, building connections between artists, locals and vulnerable populations.

From her experience she has been invited to participate in countless debates and conferences in the field of Culture and Social Innovation, both nationally and internationally.

In the heart of Lisbon, in Portugal, Intendente Square reflects the fragile social dynamics of the surrounding neighborhoods. A territory inhabited by elderly people immigrants and people with economic difficulties, as well as people suffering different situations of vulnerability such as homeless, addictions, prostitution etc. 

Within this framework, LARGO Residências cultural cooperative is a multipurpose space that combines social, cultural and commercial functions to work together with the local community. 

Our project proposal is to promote local development through cultural programmes and social businesses, involving local people in the sustainable regeneration process of this marginalized area, providing skills and knowledge for their empowerment at different levels.

LARGO in Portuguese means square/plaza. As public space, a square is a meeting point with no barriers. This is what LARGO Residências aims to elevate to humanity. A model to inspire global social inclusion practices through local empowerment.

Being mainly characterized as an area inhabited by vulnerable groups in society such as immigrants, elderly and people with poor living conditions, together with prostitution, homelessness and drug dealing, Intendente has been perceived as a dangerous and conflicted neighborhood that most Lisbon residents would avoid until the past decade. 

Due its central location in the historical center of Lisbon, it has developed in the past years into a conflict zone between citizen-led initiatives trying to improve living conditions for the residents of this area, and investors buying up buildings and converting them into hotels and short-term rental complexes. 

In recent years, tourism-driven real estate development is transforming this area, displacing residents and highly affecting those in vulnerable social and economic conditions, on the edge to be left behind by urban transformation. 

Within this context of gentrification and touristification, also LARGO Residências building will be sold for commercial purposes. Thus, we are searching for an alternative venue in the neighborhood to build LARGO 2.0, an expansion of the project we started in 2011, and continuing to create opportunities to improve quality of life of the local residents.

Based on a sustainable economic model embodying a cultural cooperative, a hotel and café, LARGO 2.0 aims to contribute to local development through its cultural activities and social businesses. In a community cultural hub that combines social, cultural and commercial functions the project plan is also to implement a cooperative housing project and promote connections between artists, cultural players, researchers, local residents, vulnerable people from the neighborhood and Lisbon citizens. 

In its cultural programmes and artistic residencies programs, Largo create bridges between artists and elements from the community, promoting integration of vulnerable people by providing them the access to creative skills and knowledge. Cultural projects’ are designed for the community to be involved not only as the audience but as the inspiration of the artists in residence and part of the creative process themselves. 

The social businesses, the hotel and the café, represent a place for dialogue between the population, the general public and the artists, as well as provide local employment opportunities.

Besides developing its own projects, Largo2.0 intends to amplify the impact of these actions by creating a network of cultural and social local partners to create integrated and multisectoral responses for local and community development.

From local and international artists, to local residents, cultural players, researchers or local shopkeepers, our project reaches out to different individuals.

Focusing on the fragile social dynamics of the neighborhoods composed by elderly population, homeless, drug addicts, sex workers and people from about 90 different nationalities living in this area, LARGO ultimately serve these groups. 

In our cultural participatory projects we involve vulnerable individuals from the community and often focus on their life stories. For example, Companhia Limitada theatre project is a piece about solitude, starting from the stories of these people.The final piece included visits and performances in the residents’ homes. 

We aim to build bridges between all this players and commit to the people we work with in the way we do not abandon them until we find an appropriate social response. Whenever we do not have the solution within our reach, we refer them to the vast network of local partners (health, education, social assistance, etc.)

Above all, LARGO works mostly at the 'street level'. The cooperative members spend much time talking to people on the streets to get to know the residents, gain their trust and invite them to the caffé or to a cultural programme.

Through cultural programmes and social businesses our project intends to provide knowledge and skills to empower local people and create opportunities to involve them in the process of regenerating a marginalized area.

By believing in a bottom-up approach to urban rehabilitation, LARGO 2.0 is a community cultural hub that aims, at a global level, to contribute for the social inclusion of the most vulnerable ones, traditionally left behind, and influence urban policies at a local and international level in urban fragile territories threatened by gentrification and turismification.

About 30-40 years ago, LARGO surrounding neighborhoods were considered as one of the darkest places of the city. Many Lisboans would not come here. The square was psychologically much bigger than the actual physical space, because of the traffic, the illegal drug trade and prostitution. 

Things changed during the last decade.

Despite the work done by key community agents that created new living conditions in this area, gentrification's and turistification's social barriers were lifted. We were quite afraid of being just another player within the gentrification process, so we focused on developing participatory cultural projects involving a wide range of people from the area. We even hired a few former prostitutes to work at the hostel to give them some different opportunities. 

With the goal of regenerating a marginalized area and changing the bad reputation of the neighborhood LARGO Residências was initiated by a group of people that decided to open an artistic space that could be financially self sustainable and empower the community.

By combining cultural and social projects we wanted to reach out artists and locals and get them involved. Create employment opportunities for local vulnerable people and develop artist-in-residence programs to build ties with the local population.

Before building LARGO, we were already in the neighborhood developing cultural projects mainly with artists and cultural players. Throughout the years we started to get involved with local community, listening to them in the streets and get inspired by their stories. Our projects slowly merged with the territory dynamics and focused on covering personal narratives from its inhabitants. At the same time, for many Lisbon residents Intendente was considered a non-place for its multiple social vulnerabilities, so our work focused on changing the bad reputation of the neighborhood. 

Around 2010, the city council decided to start a urban revitalization programme in the neighborhood to create a clearer, more accessible, more transparent urban square. While upgrading public spaces, it also potentially contributed to gentrification and touristification of the area. 

Along the years we observed this transformation and we work to fight the displacement of the local residents, at the intersection with the community, empowering people through cultural participatory projects and our social businesses. 

We believe in a bottom-up approach to urban rehabilitation and we work in that direction by mediating between public institutions and the local community, developing new functions according to the community needs.

After nearly 10 years fostering local development in Intendente neighborhood in Lisbon, LARGO has created 16 permanent employment opportunities, 5 of them for people in situations of social vulnerability. Its socio-cultural projects involved more than 1000 national and international artists, where around 700 community members participated in about 500 specific cultural activities. 

Meanwhile, LARGO developed 10 continuous projects, partenshiping with more than 70 local and international entities, in order to address the neighborhood’s main problems.

Further, LARGO manages a local cultural network of about 30 organizations to organize a participatory annual festival (Bairro Intendente em Festa). Programing activities with the various local entities, having as a challenge the social and territorial cohesion, it gives stage to participatory projects with the local community, along with national and international notorious names. Since its first edition in 2015, it gathers every year more than 30.000 people from the whole city.

Largo's cooperative project is considered a vanguard model of economic sustainability because its implementation preserves the harmony with the various dimensions of social sustainability. For this reason, it has been featured in the "Policy Handbook on Promotion of Creative Partnerships” published by the European Union. 

Overall, LARGO’s most important skills to deliver this project is its mediation ability and nonverbal communication. Our experience proves these are fundamental skills to build relationships of trust and collaboration both with the community and the local institutions, key success factor in  promoting a sustainable inclusive local development in this context.

Right at the beginning, in 2011, we decided to rent a vacant building facing Intendente square to combine activities of social inclusion and cultural effervescence with economic sustainability. With the economic crisis of 2008-2009 many public buildings were privatized and public grants were limited. Looking around in the area of Intendente, we found a variety of buildings and the one on Largo Intendente was in a better shape than many others and this made renovation less costly and therefore more feasible. LARGO needed significant upfront investment of about 200.000 euros to renovate building and pay the rent for the first months. We couldn't go to the bank as we were a new cooperative with no history. We then raised money from various sources: 50,000 euros were invested by the cooperative members (to be paid back six years later with 4% interest) and 50,000 euros came from a municipal funding. The remaining 100,000 euros were already produced by Largo’s economic activities. As an important help to the organizations cash flow, the construction contractor accepted to defer his payment of 50,000 euros until after the hostel's opening. It took about five years to pay back these investments.

Throughout almost ten years, Largo developed the ability to create relationships and balance one's involvement in local and institutional partnerships. For its work and cultural projects, LARGO was reached out by “GABIP Almirante Reis” to be part of the executive committee and mediate between citizens and the local authorities’ offices. 

GABIPs are Local Coordination Offices located in Lisbon’s vulnerable neighbourhoods. It consist of a coordinator from the municipality and an executive committee with local key stakeholders of the urban regeneration process, local authorities, local associations and other actors. These offices allow the municipality to move decision-making to the local scale and share it with local actors, promoting an articulated response among the political, administrative and technical dimensions with local organizations and community.

Within GABIP Almirante Reis, LARGO participated in the network of 30 local and institutional organizations united by their common desire: to implement and develop a communal strategy of improving the living conditions of people from the neighborhood. The combined efforts formed a Local Development Plan that took place between 2016 and 2019. This network of partnerships designed 10 projects, where LARGO was the coordinator of Escuta and Next Stop.

The innovative character of our project lays on Largo’s employment policies to include the vulnerable ones in the core of our activities. We created a variety of employment opportunities for people living in Intendente, mostly in the cafeteria and the hotel. Nowadays, Largo employs 16 workers, 80-90% of whom live in the neighborhood, and 30% coming from a highly vulnerable social situation. Additionally, our annual festival employs more people. When working with a specific community, we always seek to employ some of them as part of the project team. For example, in the Escuta project, we hired people from Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as mediators to represent their communities and translate content to communicate in specific channels. This enables the project to develop relationships of trust and collaboration with the different communities on a much deeper level. 

Moreover, LARGO strives to establish connections between the different groups. The cultural cooperative encompasses multipurpose spaces that create connections between artists, vulnerable groups from the neighborhood, tourists, researchers, other Lisbon citizens. The innovative character of our project lays also on the confrontation between different groups. When developing a social or cultural project, even though it is addressing a specific group as homelessness, for example, we do activities in the cultural space with other inhabitants from the neighborhood, or involve the elderly.  While many organizations work only with a specific target group, we create a disruptive approach by promoting an egalitarian feeling from the complementarity of the knowledge shared in the different backgrounds.

LARGO theory of change lays on empowering the community through participatory processes and holistic support, creating connections between different actors in the territory, strong enough to grow new local networks capable in a longer-term to influence policy making and resist political changes. 

Our approach on reaching the most vulnerable ones is based on mediation. LARGO activities begin at the streets, close to the community, getting to know how to listen and save problems, opinions and desires, creating bonds of trust through genuine moments of conversation and sharing. It was from the connection to the community that ideas began to merge for the different artistic and social projects carried out by the cooperative. People from the neighborhood live in fragile social and economic conditions and cultural practices are undoubtedly an engine to empower them at different levels and promote social cohesion. 

However without creating a confrontation space between different actors in the territory and working together with other organizations to provide integrated responses to address the main vulnerabilities, local development strategies can fail to their potential. We believe capacity building achieve better results when working together with other organizations and various target groups.

Currently, our project serves about 700 people referring directly to the 16 permanent employees including people in situations of social vulnerability; 50 artists and about 600 people participating in the cultural projects. From more than 70 entities with whom we establish partnerships we involve in the current cultural projects 40 elderly people from the partnership with the retirement home; 200 children from the partnership with local schools; 60 homeless people from the partnership with several local organizations and municipality; 200 migrants from different local immigrant and refugee organizations. Indirectly we serve about 5000 people in the neighborhood, from the audience of our cultural programs to the local shopkeepers and businesses.

We are currently searching for an alternative venue in the neighborhood to build LARGO 2.0. Thus, in one year we expect to expand our resources to reach directly 1500 people. Also, our project plan to extend its working fields to reach people in vulnerable living conditions. In the new building we plan to implement a housing cooperative that aims to serve about 150 people. 

In 5 years, we expect to grow in the international scope of partnerships, involving more researchers and creating connections with local development agents along the globe in order to discuss and share participatory practices and community empowerment. At this point, we expect our sustainable local development model serve 10000 people. 

For the last ten years, LARGO played an important role in regenerating the neighborhood and changing its bad reputation, addressing its main problems and contributing for the social cohesion of the territory. From its work with the community, LARGO created relationships with and between artists, cultural players, researchers, local residents, vulnerable people from the neighborhood, local organizations and institutions, effectively constituting a welfare net that takes care of vulnerable residents, reaching a concrete visible impact.

For the next year our major goal is to build a new venue in the neighborhood that allows us to continue our mission. We will work on building a solid physical structure to comprise our social businesses and the artistic residencies, so we can be independent from external funding and no longer must be threatened with eviction, compromising our work with the community. One LARGO’s focus is also to reinforce the network of cultural and social local partners in the territory to create integrated and multisectoral responses to vulnerable people in the neighborhood. We’re planning to build a housing cooperative to protect the most vulnerable ones from displacement, in LARGO’s new venue.

Within the next five years, our goal is to create connections at an international level to share and optimize knowledge on sustainable local development and participatory inclusive practices. Ultimately, we seek to continuously enhance community empowerment in the process of collective planning and decision making to enable their involvement in local governance actions and raise their influence on social policies making.

LARGO's main expense is the commercial rent paid to the building’s owner. While the rent was originally defined 8000 euros a month, it has been lowered to 6000 euros after a long negotiation, due to the significant structural problems encountered in the building and the renovations needed to be undertaken. The relationship with the building’s owner has been worsening in the past years. Preparing to put the building for sale, the owner has repeatedly threatened the cooperative with eviction in case of delays with the rent payment, despite various verbal and formal agreements. With a rental contract expiring in 2021, LARGO is in the process of building a new space in the neighborhood, and this is the main barrier to accomplish our goals and continuing our mission.

To overcome this barrier we need to build a new space to host our cultural activities and social businesses. LARGO 2.0 is the solution we are working in. The plan is to raise money from various sources to create a new building from the scratch, in the same neighborhood, on a plot of land of approximately 700m2, given for this purpose by the Municipality of Lisbon. Still, we need to raise about 2.5 million for building a new, bigger, and our own community cultural center, LARGO 2.0. 

In order to achieve this goal and overcome this barrier we plan acquire 20% of the money from equity capital and loan; 40% of the money from funds and grants and the other 40% from parthships and patronage. We count already with the partnership with Associação Mutualista Montepio, that will provide loan capital, as well as support the project management , consulting and strategic planning on setting up partnerships to create an investment fund.

For its socio-cultural projects, LARGO establish partnerships with about 70 entities at different levels. Within a vast network of local organizations, we partner with local retirement homes, local schools, civil society organizations and other local organizations working specifically with immigrants, refugees, homelessness, prostitution and addictions. These partnerships consist in creating projects together in order to create multi sectoral effective responses to address the vulnerabilities of these groups. Further, LARGO partnership with Lisbon City Council, Arroios Parish Council (the neighbourhood administrative sector),Aga Khan Foundation and Gulbenkian Foundation that have been supporting us financially, funding several of our projects and ongoing mission, as well as with resources for the projects implementation, execution, evaluation and monitorization. 

Together with Lisbon City Council and EGEAC (responsible for managing some of Lisbon’s key cultural spaces and for organizing public events) LARGO manages the cultural network of about 30 local organizations to organize the participatory annual festival since 2015.

For its local and international network, LARGO has developed a variety of partnerships to promote more inclusive development policies including the right to housing, non-speculative urban development, social economy and responsible tourism. Joining the re:Kreators (an European network to promote sustainable, social and participative urban development) and Placemaking Europe networks helped Largo participate in international policy discussions and have an impact on the European Union’s Urban Agenda discussion. Further, LARGO collaborates with Eutropian, an organization that provides support with participatory planning, policy development as well as in fundraising, cooperation and communication.

LARGO Residências is a non-profit cultural cooperative. The cooperative model was chosen because it was considered suitable to represent an entity that combines commercial activities with cultural and social actions. This way, we could run the social business and still support the non-profit activities. It also allows to include the organization's workers in Largo’s ownership and decision-making, with equal votes. 

Our operating strategy lays on three sectors: the cultural activities; the accommodation and the cafeteria, each sector with a coordinator. Some workers move between different sectors as their ambitions change. Not all members of the cooperative work daily at LARGO. Some of them do not join discussions about the daily operations but longer-term strategies and the mission of the cooperative, the quality of partnerships and networks.

LARGO’s business model has created a variety of services in the neighborhood that benefit local residents. By channeling the revenues of our commercial activities (tourist accommodation and cafeteria) into sociocultural and artistic projects that enable artists to share their work and local residents to build networks and join forces around the most pressing issues that are transforming the neighborhood. 

The café contributes to the sustainability of the entire socio-cultural project, it creates a meeting point for the community and it is where most of the cultural programming takes place.

Until this moment, LARGO’s main expense is the rent. While the hotel and hostel are responsible for most of Largo’s profit, the cafeteria, despite its initial ambitions, does not generate revenue for cultural activities. Functioning more as a social café, it accommodates people who spend long periods of time without consuming. Besides the social businesses we rent ground floor spaces from LARGO building to a a vinyl shop and a bicycle store, also contributing to the financial sustainability of the building’s management. 

Further, we raise money with the cultural projects created by LARGO, selling them to cultural venues as theaters and events such as festivals. 

Through our business model we have achieved economic sustainability of our socio-cultural activities, together with sustained grants from the Municipality and punctual funds from cultural institutions as Gulbenkian and Ministry of culture.

With a rental contract expiring in 2021, LARGO is in the process of raising money and establishing partnerships to enable the construction of a new building. Form the partnership with the municipality we have already a block about 10 mints walking from our current building. In order to build a new building from the scratch we need to raise about 2.5 million until the end of this year. 

Together with Associação Mutualista Montepio that will support the project management and strategic planning to create an investment fund, 500.000€ will come from debt and equities. 

To cover 1.000.000€ we intend to apply for project’s financial support on funds and grants from Turismo de Portugal, European Union programmes and other suitable grants to support social inclusion through artistic practices, local and non-speculative urban development, social economy and responsible tourism. 

The remaining money to cover the total expenses of the project will be raised from patronage and partnerships with construction companies, architecture enterprises and other services. 

All being said, LARGO has been creating relationships of trust and collaboration both with the community and the local institutions, promoting inclusive development practices and contributing actively to the social cohesion of the neighborhood. Within Lisbon historical center, the main barriers we have been facing were always related either with the rent price, or the eviction threat. Along these years in Intendente, LARGO work is deeply connected with its people, and to move to another area of the city is not an option. 

The first step of finding a new space in the same neighborhood is already accomplished with the support of Lisbon’s Municipality. However, now we have the big challenge of raising money to build LARGO 2.0 and we are applying to The Elevate Prize in order to reach the funds to achieve this goal.

Aligned with our long-term mission, we intend to create connections to promote a continuous dialogue with institutions, researchers and policy makers - and we believe the Elevate Prize can be a great platform for this purpose. The connections with global networks, industry leaders and subject-matter experts to improve understanding and working relations between initiatives and institutions. To match with possible investors. To create a global network between stakeholders of local development and participatory practices strong enough to influence the government's local, national and international agendas.