What we love most about the Creative Week of Tiradentes 2025

Between October 16 and 19, Tiradentes (MG) transformed into a stage for Brazilian creativity. In its 9th edition, the Creative Week of Tiradentes (SCT 2025) celebrated craftsmanship and promoted meetings between designers and artisans from different regions of the country. Together, they exchanged knowledge, shared stories, and shaped true works of art, reaffirming the event's purpose of valuing Brazilian material culture and its multiple accents. Here are the favorites of this edition:

1. Casa Pará: a dive into the Amazonian soul

One of the major highlights of SCT 2025 was the Casa Pará, whose exhibition design was sensitively signed by Guá Arquitetura. The space presented a series of exhibitions that placed tradition, territory, and contemporaneity in dialogue, each one reflecting the identity of the artists and Pará artisans involved.

In total, there were eight exhibitions, highlighting the collective action and the power of ancestry. Among them, Admiriti, a partnership between Guá Arquitetura and masters Joel, Valdeli, Ivan, and Síria, presented furniture and lighting that reinvent the use of miriti, an Amazon palm tree from which a lightweight and renewable fiber is extracted, also known as the "styrofoam of the Amazon". The pieces revealed the strength of traditional knowledge in creating sustainable and poetic solutions.

Another highlight of Casa Pará was the meeting with master Vital, who exhibited his masks made from repurposed materials and enchanted the audience by personally telling the stories behind each piece.

The Veropa exhibition paid tribute to the traditional Ver-o-Peso market, referencing the smells, colors, and flavors of the Pará market. Meanwhile, the works of artist Petcho Silveira invited a sensitive dive into the life of black Amazonia, while the Cabeçudinhos, made by residents of São Caetano de Odivelas, presented paper mache sculptures that represent cultural symbols of the city, colorful and expressive figures that fill the streets during festivals and carnivals.

2. Jardim de Luz: the delicacy that illuminates

In the porch of the Museu Casa Padre Toledo, one of the most enchanting installations of the edition captivated the audience: the Jardim de Luz, created by the designer from Minas Pietro Oliveira in partnership with artisan Welington Carvalho from Prados (MG), and scenic design by Alexandre Rousset.

Inside glass domes, hand-molded flowers in corn straw transformed into lamps, revealing the balance between artisanal technique and contemporary design. More than an installation, the space was a tribute to the poetry of handcrafting and the symbolic value of mining crafts, a light that arises from the hands and spreads as memory and affection.

3. Color, emotion, and craftsmanship: the maximalist Brazil of Maurício Arruda

Another remarkable moment of SCT 2025 was the lecture Color, emotion, and craftsmanship: maximalist Brazil, led by architect Maurício Arruda. In a packed auditorium, Maurício shared his vision of the role of craftsmanship and popular art in building a genuinely Brazilian identity.

“Popular art and Brazilian craftsmanship move us because they take away the obligation to make something beautiful. It is beautiful because it is real, it is the courage of the Brazilian people to create,” he stated. His speech captured the spirit of the event: celebrating the imperfect, the authentic, and what is born from the hands with soul and emotion.

4. Between masks and arrangements: Papangus in transit

In the Old City Hall, the exhibition Between masks and arrangements: Papangus in transit, by Nicolas Gondim and the Casa de Design Cearense, was one of the major meeting points of the edition. The project stemmed from Gondim's photographic research on the Papangus, masked characters who take to the streets of Ceará during Easter, in manifestations that mix humor, faith, and creative freedom.

Inspired by this universe, designers Brenda Guimarães, Bruno Camarotti, Erico Gondim, Heytor Borges, Igor Sabá, João Pedro Crispin, and Leo Ferreiro transformed the theme into a sensory experience. Among the highlights were the photographs of Papangus captured by Nicolas; the TRAQUINOS pieces by Erico, made from repurposed plumbing pipes and woven with straw and ribbons; and the bar with stained glass created by João Crispin, inspired by the characters' masks and developed from research on the artisanal stained glass production of Fortaleza.

The ensemble revealed how design can be a field of experimentation and resistance, preserving the vernacular and the symbolic within a contemporary language.

5. In the ring of imagination: the fantastic universe of Fabio Francino

The exhibition In the Ring of Imagination, by the honored artist of SCT 2025 Fabio Francino, transformed the exhibition space into a true arena of affections.

Working with paper mache, Fabio creates hybrid figures, part human, part animal, that express spirituality, humor, and emotion. His sculptures dialogue with the circus universe and popular religiosity, revealing the beauty of the extraordinary in the everyday.

The purple, a color that enveloped the entire show, was inspired by the poem Purple, by Adélia Prado, and chosen as a symbol of spirituality, passion, and transformation. Amidst oniric characters and intense expressions, the audience found a touching portrait of Brazil that imagines, creates, and believes.

The SCT 2025 left in Tiradentes an atmosphere of enchantment and belonging. More than an event, the Creative Week reaffirmed its role as a cultural movement that connects people, territories, and stories, and that, year after year, proves that Brazilian design pulses stronger when born from the meeting of hands and hearts. We are already counting down to the 2026 edition!