Daniela Silveira grew up in the parish of Conceição, in Angra do Heroísmo. Her mother is from Santa Bárbara, and her father is from Praia da Vitória. She spent much of her youth in an urban environment.

“My father’s family is very different from my mother’s,” she says. Her paternal family’s strong connection to the Lajes Air Base meant that Daniela grew up with a strong American influence. “My grandmother was a maid for Americans and my aunt was a babysitter for their children. When I went to my grandmother’s house, everything was American, from the food to the appliances,” she says. Her contact with jazz, which would become the theme of her first project, began precisely at the dances she attended at the Lajes Air Base.

Initially, Daniela Silveira began by studying law and attending a four-year degree course in Porto, but then moved into business management. She started her professional career in the cultural sector in 2012, giving wings to her first project, +Jazz, which later became an international festival. Daniela quickly realized that she wanted to make culture her professional life.

+Jazz was created to provide a stage for local musicians overlooked by the international jazz festivals on Terceira Island. “I wanted to create a stage where these artists could present their work,” she explains. Her main intention was to bring this musical style to “local bars and restaurants.” Daniela says that support for +Jazz was “minimal,” but still enough to keep the project going. The festival gained “another level of visibility” when it moved to Angra do Heroísmo, leading Captain Pedro Horta to suggest reviving the jazz dances at the Lajes Air Base, like the ones Daniela used to go to as a child.

With the emergence of +Jazz, the festival began to promote “local projects related” to this area, which, over time, was transported to “other islands.” After ten years, +Jazz is currently “dormant.”

During the ten years of +Jazz, Daniela was involved in other activities. She collaborated with various entities linked to culture. She worked at the Cine Clube da Ilha Terceira, the Angra do Heroísmo Museum, and was part of the management of the Azorean Institute of Culture, but at the same time, she was developing her “own projects.” She felt that she did not “see herself as a civil servant,” preferring the freedom to “diversify,” work “with different teams and projects,” and make her “own schedule.”

In 2019, the association “Get Art” was born, on the initiative of Daniela Silveira, to bring together and promote music festivals, such as the “Lava” festival, which also emerged in 2019 on the island of Pico. “Get Art is the culmination of seven years of work, when I was beginning to understand the dynamics of managing a cultural association,” says Daniela.

Daniela acknowledges that the hardest part of having an association is “keeping it going.” With no permanent staff, Get Art works with professionals on a “service provision basis,” and the cultural manager admits that, “for a long time,” she felt overwhelmed by being “on all fronts.” Today, the work is divided among a “small community,” essential to the association’s performance. When she became a mother in 2019, she needed to adapt her work schedule, but motherhood also led her to explore new professional perspectives.

One of Daniela Silveira’s most cherished projects is “Atitude.” Created with colleagues, Atitude began as an application for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s “Parties & Art for Change” program, involving “art aimed at an audience with cognitive disabilities,” she says. Although the project was a finalist, it did not receive funding, but was taken up by Get Art at the regional level. Approved by the Regional Directorate for the Promotion of Equality and Social Inclusion, Atitude kicks off with “two artistic residencies” on the island of Terceira, in collaboration with the Associação Cristã da Mocidade (ACM) and the Centro de Apoio à Deficiência (CAD).

Gaining momentum, the project expanded to São Miguel, with the support of the Portuguese Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ACAPO) and the island of Pico. With high demand and difficulty meeting it all, the Guide to Good Practices for Inclusion Through Art was created, with all the “methodology necessary for organizing a social inclusion project.” “I design a project, but after that, it is no longer just mine. The idea will only develop with other people,” adds Daniela.

Daniela Silveira ends the interview with our newspaper by sharing one of the projects she has been working on for several years and has never given up on. Concerned about the “disappearance of some structures,” the cultural manager began developing a map of the “Coretos dos Açores” in 2019, which was only approved in 2024. The ultimate goal is to safeguard this cultural heritage by collecting information with a “strong scientific component,” she says.

Daniela’s resilience, optimism, and willingness to embrace new and diverse experiences accompany her professional life, which has been marked by a dedication to culture for more than ten years.

In Diário da Lagoa, Carina Silva, Colaborator and Clife Botelho, director.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publications at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks the Luso-American Education Foundation for their support.