Wild Côa Symphony

Artist Residency | Greater Côa Valley

Antony Lyons and Bárbara Carvalho’s artist residency in the Greater Côa Valley, Portugal.

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About the Artists

Antony Lyons

Antony Lyons is an ecological artist and environmental designer whose work spans land art, sculpture, film and sound. He often works in river valleys and coastal regions, focusing on water, geomorphology and ecological change.

Bárbara Carvalho

Bárbara Carvalho is an archaeologist whose practice examines how people mark and interpret landscapes over time. She has worked extensively with communities and heritage sites in Portugal, drawing links between deep-time histories and present-day relationships with land and water.

About the Residency

The Greater Côa Valley lies between the Douro River and the Malcata mountains in northern Portugal. It is a rugged landscape of schist slopes, river gorges and scattered villages, with a history that stretches from Palaeolithic rock art to present day rewilding work. Supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, Rewilding Portugal is strengthening a 120,000 hectare wildlife corridor here, helping species such as vultures and wild horses return while supporting local economies.

Into this setting came ecological artist Antony Lyons and archaeologist Bárbara Carvalho. Their artist residency set out to follow the full course of the Côa River, from its upland source to its meeting with the Douro, listening closely to how water, people, animals and stone are connected. Their project, Wild Côa Symphony, uses sound, film and community collaboration to ask how this valley might become a place of healing for both ecosystems and local communities.

Following the river

Over four seasons, Lyons and Carvalho travelled along the Côa, tracing its journey from the rains on Serra da Estrela to the Douro. They visited rewilding areas such as Vale Carapito, Ermo das Águias and the Faia Brava Reserve, where Sorraia horses and vultures are helping to restore natural processes. These journeys were part fieldwork, part listening exercise, using walking, sound recording and film to understand how the valley is changing.

The river carries many stories. On its cliffs are thousands of Palaeolithic engravings of aurochs, deer, horses and goats. In its villages, people recount memories of farming, forestry and migration. Lyons and Carvalho treated the valley as a continuous gallery and archive, paying attention to both ancient marks on stone and the contemporary marks of restoration, such as new grazing systems and returning wildlife.

“This is a project of journeys and encounters, where people with very different backgrounds are exploring multi-sensory geographies in a landscape,” says Bárbara. “In our work, we communicate a core principle of flow and positive ecological change, enhancing a sense of territorial identity, encompassing a river and its topography.”

Listening with communities

From the beginning, the residency was shaped by collaboration with local communities and schools. Lyons and Carvalho led artist-led walks, sound and music workshops, and small performances across the valley. In Pinhel, they worked with primary school pupils, using drawing, song and listening exercises to explore local wildlife and the river.

In Vilar Maior, they guided a “deep time” walk to the rewilding area of Vale Carapito. Participants of all ages followed a route punctuated by pre-recorded sounds, songs and shared stories. Along the way, they exchanged plant knowledge, memories and reflections on how the landscape has changed. A song written for the town, “Vilar Maior”, told the story of the artists’ journey along the river to this historic place.

One participant later reflected:

“I was born and lived all my life in this place, walking back and forward in every one of its paths, but I never took the time to pay enough attention to understand how much we could find in it, about us, about nature, about time and the changing landscape.”

These encounters helped build new connections between people and the restoration work under way, showing the valley not only as a site of ecological change but as a shared cultural space.

Marking change in the landscape

The residency also connected with Rewilding Portugal’s CÔA – Corredor das Artes festival, which brought land art and performance into the valley’s rewilding areas. Lyons created Habitat (A Treasure House) at Faia Brava, a lime-washed structure based on traditional pigeon houses that houses community-donated animal skulls and stories. The work sits within a landscape where vultures now return in growing numbers to feed, highlighting the role of scavengers in a healthy ecosystem.

Nearby, land art commissions such as Marcelo Moscheta’s Conic Infinite and Gaspard Combes’ Homo Stabilis offered new viewpoints on the valley, inviting visitors to sit, shelter, listen and consider their relationship with the land. Lyons and Carvalho contributed to these wider conversations through exercises like “Hands for giving, receiving and connecting”, where participants recorded their hand on rock or soil, echoing ancient hand motifs and creating a temporary shared gallery.

These activities supported Rewilding Portugal’s efforts to deepen local pride and show how restoration can create new opportunities for culture and community life in the corridor.

Wild Côa Symphony

Throughout their journeys, the artists gathered audio, video and stories. Acoustic field recordings, music-based data sonifications, songs, workshop outputs and film sequences became the building blocks of Wild Côa Symphony, a video-sonic artwork that follows the river from source to confluence.

The work has been shown in preview at local events such as the Vila Wild Festival, alongside open-air photographic exhibitions. Once completed, Wild Côa Symphony will be presented in the project area and beyond as an exhibition combining film and sound. It acts as a multi-sensory map of the valley in transition, inviting audiences to consider the Côa as a place where restoration, heritage and daily life meet.

As Lyons puts it, the aim is “to create a space, real and metaphorical, for the co-creation of a video-sonic portrait with which people can genuinely feel an emotional relationship, and which can also evolve over time.”