“Bus Wisdoms” (Sabedoria de Autocarro) is the name we gave our work for Connecting Commutes, a project for the Portuguese Capital of Culture in Braga. Out of one hundred interviews made with passengers at Braga bus stops — asking them to condense their advice for life into a single sentence — we created thirty short audio vignettes that were presented for 6 months on two city buses fitted with specially designed sound systems. The audio pieces were also broadcast as a daily month-long twice daily series on Portuguese national radio cultural channel Antena 2.

On the first night of our research visit to Braga nine months earlier we had come up with the idea to connect directly with the city’s bus passengers, many of whom are elderly and/or disenfranchised, to find out if they would like to tell us about the most important things they have learned in life, what touches their hearts, what they care most about to pass on by way of advice for living. Our plan was to pay tribute to their spoken phrases by producing mini musical pieces for each contributor. We set out for a bus trip across the city with the goal of seeing one of Europe’s last string instrument building companies, APC, and from that moment decided that all the audio we produced for the work would be made on instruments built in the city. Needless to say we came home on the train with several instruments… A big thank you to Elisabete from APC who supported the project with sponsorship.

The bus stop which inspired us, Luìs installs speakers, the test ride, a Bus Wisdom sticker (all photos by Stefanie Koch except where noted)

We were fortunate to be able to team up with our producer, Luís Pinto who carried out the interviews and translated them for us, so that we could select a cross-section of material to best represent people from different areas of the city. He did an absolutely amazing job, and we could not have done the project in the form it took without his enthusiasm and dedication to the cause. He also organised workshops and a master class for us to teach at Theatro Circo and Braga Media Arts. For a relatively small city, we were bowled over by the high level of cultural activities on offer.

Stickering a bus, Sarah’s new guitar, the installation opening – complete with 2-hour bus ride (bottom two photos by Guilherme Maranhão / Braga25)

Another nice feature of the project was that we were allowed to install Bus Wisdom as printed stickers in more of the buses, enabling us to commemorate the participating passengers by name and district. The bus company were hospitable and several officials came along to celebrate the opening of the project.

Before we left the country, with the project playing out over the following six months, we did a 2-part workshop for Braga Media Arts in which we enabled participants to create a collective work of radio art, to be broadcast on the worldwide network of more than 20 Radia member stations. As it was impossible to ignore the obvious sonic feature of Braga – its numerous bells ringing out across the city, we requested a visit to Serafim da Silva Jerónimo & Filhos, the last working bell foundry in Portugal. This field trip and associated musical events became a central theme of the workshop participant’s work:

Finally a big thank you to our assistant Steffi Koch, who travelled with us from Germany to help carry out the project, her support was much appreciated and proved to be invaluable.

Steffi browsing Braga’s finest book store, cultural hub, and garden cafe, Centésima Página