Exhibition “Toys and Games”
Castro Daire Municipal Library
15 July to 26 August 2019
Opening: 15 July at 15h00
Exhibition integrated in the “Memory on Wheels” project, a partnership between the Municipal Library of Castro Daire and Binaural Nodar.
For centuries, generations of children in the municipality of Castro Daire have interpreted life, dreams and growth with the help of memory and matter. Playing meant not so much to pass the time as entering into rituals of passage in which built toys, spiels and legends constituted mechanisms of connection with the territory, with previous generations and with oral tradition related to skills and autonomy, which today could well fit into the DIY movement (“do it yourself”).
The impetus for the exhibition “Brinquedos e Brincadeiras” (“Toys and games”), which will be on open between July 15 and August 26, came from a series of ethnographic collections of the Memory on Wheels project held last May in the parishes from Almofala and Monteiras on ancient modes of playing in the Montemuro mountains.
In the various interviews carried out, a series of very popular games were highlighted, such as the patela game (similar to the monkey game), the peg game (played with two simple nails), the berrelha game (like an ancestral and rural hockey game that instead of a goal, a hole in the ground was used), the bow and arrow (built with sticks of old umbrellas and wire), the bullet thrower (built in wood or cane, used for the launching of tiny stones or olives), wooden walkways, wooden or metal mesh game, rag dolls, wooden prams, the button game, rag balls to play football, the scratch, take, leave and put game (using a small top with the letters R, T, D, P inscribed on its four faces) and so many others that are still in the memory of many today, who can pass on their experience to newer generations.
In addition to traditional toys, the exhibition features texts by Lurdes Maravilha, Marta Carvalhal and Luis Gomes da Costa and a sound installation “Toys and games in Castro Daire” created by Binaural Nodar expressly for this exhibition based on sound collections made for the “Memories on Wheels” project.
The exhibition “Toys and Games, which includes a large number of traditional toys and games, was only possible with the collaboration of several people and entities to which the Municipality of Castro Daire is deeply grateful: Ms. Lurdes Maravilha, the parish of Almofala, the parish of Monteiras, the Museum of Relva of Mr. Ilídio Magueijo, the Museum of Games in Vagos, Binaural Nodar and the Portuguese Confederation of Culture, Recreation and Sports.