One of the SMOTIES goals was to develop a tool to measure the impact of the
activities designed by the Madeira’s team on the general community of Estreito da
Calheta. This tool had to register, in a qualitative measure, the emotional values that
the community memorised from all the activities organised in the village within the
SMOTIES scope.
On the second half of 2023, the Madeira’s team reunited with the group of locals with
whom we had been working closely from the beginning of the project, and together
came up with the idea to organise a Christmas Market where we could promote and
sell local craftsmanship, traditional madeiran foods and drinks, host traditional
christmas songs concerts and other traditional cultural activities. It was in this context
that the creative tool from Madeira came up – the Christmas postcards. The intention
with this tool was to invite people to write to their close relatives and friends about the
changes that were taking place in Estreito da Calheta, since the SMOTIES project
started working with the community.
During the Christmas Market, on the 16th of December of 2023, there was a red
mail-box, designed to fit with the theme of Christmas, and identified with the SMOTIES
logo, displayed on a set of tables. Next to the mailbox there were several postcards
with illustrations from the Design Bachelor’s students, a set of pens and a board with
instructions to aid people on how to use the postcards and for them to understand that
the SMOTIES team in Madeira would then send the postcard to the respective receiver.
The overall feedback we got during the event was positive, locals appreciated the
initiative and the illustrations from the postcards. Children, especially, enjoyed the
thought of writing a message to Santa Claus. People from all age groups participated in
the activity.
However, the initiative was not as successful as we had initially thought. Either
because they struggled with words to express themselves, either because the illiterate
level made them shy away from participating or because they were just distracted with
the different activities available at the event. From 400 postcards, with 4 different
illustrations, we gathered 21 postcards with positive feedback about the SMOTIES
intervention in Estreito and 16 postcards with Christmas messages.
The 21 postcards with positive feedback were mostly vague but congratulated the effort
and accomplished goals by the SMOTIES team and the group of locals with whom we
worked.
A lot of people took the postcards but never returned them. The few leftover postcards
were left at the Church, in the hope to eventually get some more answers. Howeve
unsuccessfully. The culture in Portugal of sending Christmas postcards has been lost.
With this initiative, that we believed would be successful, we realised that not always
what seems simple and with potential to succeed, effectively works.