In a time when childhood increasingly unfolds behind screens and hurried routines, a new family project born in the rural parish of Santa Bárbara is attempting to recover something slower, more tactile, and deeply rooted in island memory: the simple joy of growing up close to animals, nature, family, and traditional play.

Recently inaugurated, the Espaço do Camilo presents itself as far more than a leisure venue or children’s event space. According to its founders, it emerged gradually from personal transformation, family memory, and a desire to create a place where generations could reconnect through shared experiences.

“More than a physical space, we want it to be a place where people create memories and feel the desire to return,” explained founder Mónica in an interview discussing the origins of the project.

The concept combines elements of a recreational venue and educational farm, designed to host everything from family gatherings and birthday parties to school visits, community events, and celebrations. Yet beneath the practical structure lies something more emotional: an attempt to bridge past and present within a rapidly changing social landscape.

The idea for the project emerged during a moment of personal transition.

After leaving the company where she had worked for nine years, Mónica found herself searching for something more meaningful and fulfilling. Together with her husband, she began looking differently at the family’s land, imagining how it might become a space capable of carrying both personal significance and communal value.

The process unfolded organically.

As parents themselves, they felt the absence of different types of spaces for children’s activities and family events on the island. That realization led Mónica back toward her own childhood memories — traditional games, outdoor activities, and the rural rhythms through which earlier generations of Azorean children experienced everyday life.

Slowly, the family began collecting traditional games, inflatable attractions, pedal cars, and recreational activities while simultaneously preparing the land to welcome children and families. Today, many of those materials are also available for rental for events outside the property itself.

At the same time, another essential dimension of the project naturally emerged: animals.

Having grown up in a rural environment where contact with animals formed part of daily life, Mónica wanted her own children to experience the same connection. One idea gradually led to another, until the space evolved into what she describes as a true “extended family” of animals — adding authenticity, warmth, and emotional texture to each visit.

The response from the public, according to the family, quickly surpassed expectations.

Even before the official inauguration, inquiries and reservations began arriving through the project’s social media pages and through word of mouth among friends and relatives. Since then, the space has already begun hosting school visits, after-school programs, birthday parties, social gatherings, and even bachelor and bachelorette celebrations.

The versatility of the project appears central to its identity: a place simultaneously recreational and educational, rural and modern, nostalgic yet adaptable to contemporary family life.

Yet perhaps the most moving aspect of the initiative lies in its name itself.

The “Espaço do Camilo” pays tribute to Mónica’s maternal grandfather, Camilo, with whom she shared a profound bond throughout childhood. Raised largely in her grandparents’ home, she spent afternoons accompanying him in agricultural work, learning not only practical tasks but also a respect for animals, land, and rural life that would later shape the project itself.

“My grandfather Camilo was a very gentle person, loved by everyone,” she recalled. “Giving his name to this space was a way of keeping his memory alive while honoring the values he passed on to me.”

In many ways, the project reflects a broader cultural anxiety increasingly visible across island societies and diaspora communities alike: how to preserve forms of human connection, outdoor experience, and intergenerational memory in an age dominated by digital distraction.

For Mónica and her family, the answer has not been to reject technology entirely, but to create balance.

Their children actively participate in the daily care of animals and farm activities, waking early on weekends not out of obligation, but out of enthusiasm and pride. Through that involvement, the family hopes they are learning values of responsibility, care, and connection to the land that will remain with them throughout life.

There are still mobile phones, of course. But there is also mud, animals, grass, games, shared work, and the slow rhythm of outdoor life.

On islands where emigration, modernization, and globalization have transformed so much over recent decades, projects like Espaço do Camilo reveal another kind of aspiration — not merely economic entrepreneurship, but the preservation of emotional inheritance itself.

Sometimes, the future of a place begins with the memory of a grandfather teaching a child how to care for animals in the fields of a small Azorean parish.

Translated and adapted from a story in Diário Insular-José Lourenço, director.