Faia Brava, Portugal’s first private protected nature reserve and part of the Natura 2000 network and UNESCO-recognised Côa Valley Archaeological Park, will host the inaugural planting of the Eternal Forest Sanctuary.

The event celebrates the 25th anniversary of Faia Brava and marks the beginning of a visionary long-term collaboration between Eternal Forest and local partners, including the Faia Brava Association and the Côa Museum, to establish the first of many Eternal Forest sanctuaries. It’s an invitation to the public to witness and participate in the planting of a forest designed not only for ecological regeneration but as a living artwork rooted in culture, biodiversity, and intergenerational care.

Participants in the November gathering will experience a Symposium on art, forest and community, and tree planting guided by artistic and regenerative design, an artistic ceremony and a celebration with the community. The event is open to all who wish to contribute to this unfolding story.

This land has long been a cradle of human creativity and reverence for nature. In the Côa Valley, home to the largest open-air gallery of Paleolithic engravings in Europe, humans carved their visions into schist rock over 25,000 years ago. These ancient marks speak to an unbroken relationship between people and place, memory and the living landscape. Eternal Forest draws inspiration from this deep cultural continuity, translating those ancestral gestures and practices into a contemporary form: planting trees and creating forests as acts of care, reverence, and long-term cultural expression.


Just as the engravings have become a living legacy telling the story of biodiversity, land, and people across millennia, the Eternal Forest sanctuaries are envisioned as living artworks that carry this story forward, rooted in the land and created to inspire generations to come.

But this is not just a one-time event. Faia Brava is the first official Sanctuary within a much larger movement, Eternal Forest Global, launched in 2018 in Portugal. After witnessing the aftermath of the destructive fires of 2017, artist Evgenia Emets birthed with the vision of 1,000 forest sanctuaries around the world to stand for generations

At its core, Eternal Forest is an answer to the global emergency we are witnessing: biodiversity loss and the growing disconnect between people and nature.

  • What is the vision behind Eternal Forest?

Eternal Forest is a long-term artistic and ecological vision to create 1,000 forest sanctuaries protected for the next 1,000 years. Each sanctuary is both a living artwork and a thriving ecosystem, rooted in biodiversity, cultural memory, and intergenerational care. It invites us to reimagine legacy not as what we leave behind, but what we grow together with the Earth. These sanctuaries are not just reforestation projects. Each is shaped through regenerative artistic design, rooted in deep listening to the land and co-created with local communities, scientists, and artists.

Credits: Marco Piano, Courtesy of Eternal Forest

Eternal Forest has been working in dialogue with diverse landscapes and communities across Portugal, Spain, Finland, Romania, and the USA - building awareness, offering artistic workshops, participating in exhibitions, holding ceremonial plantings, and crafting local partnerships. Each step has been a learning process, focusing on growing forests and a network of people dedicated to cultural, ecological, and spiritual regeneration.

Seeding Eternal Forest in Faia Brava marks a turning point. It is the first sanctuary to be fully designed, funded, and planted through this long-term commitment.

The initiative is about creating spaces of reverence, resilience, and belonging, where future generations can inherit ecosystems infused with meaning, memory, and biodiversity.

  • Why do you want to connect art with sustainability?

Art allows us to see the world differently: to feel, to wonder, to care. It’s not just decoration; it’s a language of deep listening and meaning-making. When we bring art into the realm of sustainability, we humanize the ecological crisis. Suddenly, regeneration is not only about planting trees or reversing damage — it becomes about how we live, what we value, and how we tell the story of our relationship with the Earth.

In Eternal Forest, art is the connective tissue between ecology and culture. It invites people to engage not just intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually: transforming sustainability from a policy issue into a personal calling. The act of planting a tree becomes a gesture of care, a living poem, a way to write hope into the future.

Credits: Marco Piano, Courtesy of Eternal Forest

Through artistic design and experiences, Eternal Forest activates local communities as stewards of the forest, actively protecting the sanctuary for future generations to create a long-lasting legacy.

  • What are the most valuable aspects of forest regeneration?

Forest regeneration restores more than ecosystems: it restores relationships between people, place, and the living world. It protects biodiversity, supports climate resilience, and heals degraded land, while also offering space for beauty, reflection, and community. In a time of disconnection, regenerating forests means regenerating life itself.

But it also does something subtler and equally important: it reconnects us to time. Regeneration is slow, patient work. It asks us to think beyond our lifetimes, to plant not for ourselves but for those who come after. It invites us into the organic and cyclical time of nature and frees us from the linear perception of time.

Credits: Marco Piano, Courtesy of Eternal Forest

In Faia Brava, where wild horses roam and vultures nest in cliffs, forest regeneration is also cultural regeneration. It brings together traditional knowledge, scientific insight, and artistic imagination. By restoring forests with care and creativity, we restore our sense of belonging to land, to community, and to a longer story of life on Earth.

Eternal Forest is more than a project: it's a movement to reconnect with the land, with time, and with each other. By supporting this moment and helping us to plant the Seed of Eternal Forest, anyone can become part of a living legacy: one that invites us to be good ancestors and co-create sanctuaries of life, beauty, and care.

To join this journey and help plant the first Eternal Forest Sanctuary in Faia Brava, visit the crowdfunding campaign:
https://ppl.pt/en/causas/eternalforest


Evgenia Emets – Artistic Director
+351 927 749 045
info@eternalforest.earth
https://eternalforest.earth/

https://seed.eternalforest.earth/event-en

https://ppl.pt/en/causas/eternalforest