The Foundation

The opening conference was held in the Geosciences Auditorium at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro with the following speakers: João Vale de Almeida - Ambassador to the European Union, Rui Tavares, Historian and Miguel Poiares Maduro, Professor of Law. The session was moderated by Teresa Albuquerque and had an interested and large audience, which practically filled the auditorium to capacity.

On 11 March, a conference on the impact of Globalisation on Universities was held in the Geosciences Auditorium of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, with David Malone, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Rector of the United Nations University.

On 19 November 2016, as part of the partnership with the Douro Vintage Forum, a conference was held entitled "Philosophy and Music between Two Worlds". The session featured a philosopher, Lúcio Marques, and a musicologist, Ricardo Bernardes, who presented their work in these fields, the former more focused on the period between the 17th and 18th centuries, and the latter on the 18th and 19th centuries, moderated by Pedro Braga Falcão, a musician and professor of the History of Religions at the Portuguese Catholic University.

On 29 October, as part of the "Caminhos de Mateus" programme to help frame the intense cultural and knowledge exchange, particularly with Brazil, in the 17th and 18th centuries, a conference was given by Professor Rui Vieira Nery at the Barrão of the Casa de Mateus, entitled "Dialogues of cultures in ancient Portuguese-Brazilian music".

Projects

Common Place

In September 2018, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation announced support for "20 ideas capable of promoting lifelong learning", in a programme it called Knowledge Workshops. Responding to the challenge proposed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Casa de Mateus Foundation designed and applied for the Common Place project. Taking its human capital as a central resource, the Foundation set out above all to find mechanisms for systemic qualification of this capital, reinforcing the possibility of an integrated vision that takes into account the plurality of the Casa de Mateus' historical way of being and the statutory purposes to which the Foundation is bound.

The Common Place project aims to develop the Casa de Mateus Foundation's human capital through an integrated vision of its role, values and opportunities and the empowerment of its teams through the acquisition of new knowledge and methodologies, enabling them to face the demands of contemporary management and the challenges of agility, quality and transparency that characterise a 21st century organisation.

It involves the entire Casa de Mateus Foundation team and a number of the Foundation's employees and partners in a series of training-action workshops aimed at: building a transversal vision of the complexity of its mission and structure; understanding oneself as a singular and decisive point in the structure; developing personal skills (in terms of language skills or digital literacy) and professional skills (related to each of the sectors of activity but designed to be shared by workers from other areas).

It pays particular attention to heritage management and its mediation with plural audiences. It seeks an agile model, anchored in autonomous teams, capable of generating responses in real time, adaptable to change, orientated towards sustainable development and simple solutions, with technical excellence and the incorporation of design, capable of continuous monitoring and transformation.

It invests in relational skills and in valuing consolidated knowledge, by taking into account the distance between the personal backgrounds of each of its employees and looking for participatory methods that make everyone not a passive recipient of information, but a source of shareable knowledge. Each person must acquire specialised knowledge in their field of action and a general knowledge of all other areas of intervention. The transformation should take place: in individual qualifications, through the acquisition and strengthening of professional and cultural skills; in relational qualifications, through teamwork and strengthening the capacity for initiative and accountability; in systemic qualifications, through greater transparency in the individual's reading of the institution and its forms of action, also producing an effect of greater transparency with the Casa de Mateus Foundation's various external partners.

To date, 81 actions have been carried out, divided into 17 training modules, two seminars and five conferences. The total number of Foundation employees involved in the training was 56 people, totalling 2,569 hours of training, the total number of employees from organisations linked to the Foundation was 13 people, totalling 303 hours of training and the total number of community members involved in the training was 214 people, totalling 1,102 hours of training.

The trainings were given by 39 employees who contributed a total of 900 hours of training.

The Common Place Project totalled 1,444 training participants, with more than one person taking part in more than one training course, making a total of 4,874 hours of training participation.

KNOW MORE

EVENTS

2023

Sat

Dec

17:00