Cultural Foundation of Pará (FCP) promotes workshop on conservation and restoration of newspapers
The workshop has two modules and uses newspapers from the 1980s and 1990s
The Cultural Foundation of Pará (FCP) started on this Monday (22) a workshop focused on the conservation and restoration of historical newspapers in Belém. The activity was divided into two modules and offered 10 spots for participants interested in learning specialized techniques for the preservation and restoration of periodicals.
In this first module, students are working on the organization and cleaning of the collection, focusing on periodicals and journalistic materials. This first stage of the workshop started on Monday, 22, and will run until this Friday, 26, with classes from 8 am to 12 pm, Monday to Friday, in the restoration room on the 3rd floor of the FCP headquarters, located at Avenida Gentil Bittencourt, No. 650, in the Nazaré neighborhood.
The second module is scheduled to take place between September 29 and October 3, and will be dedicated to the creation of storage boxes that will hold the organized and cleaned newspapers from the previous stage.
“This workshop is showing students how to clean, recover, and store newspapers properly. The students will learn the complete preparation for conservation and restoration. The workshop is designed to show them this service and teach them how to care for newspapers,” emphasizes Marcos Lima, the instructor responsible for the workshop.
Sarah Nazik is a 6th semester museology student at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). She said she has always followed FCP's workshops on social media and took advantage of the university break to participate in the workshop:
“In the museology course, we study preventive conservation; there we generally do not restore, but I have contact because I have done individual workshops, watched videos online, and taken care of my personal collection at home, but I had never done it with newspapers, so this is new for me. The teacher was very attentive, explained everything in a detailed manner, and here we have plenty of space to carry out the functions simply and organized. So I liked it a lot. We also got to know the FCP collection, which was very interesting,” comments the student.
According to the workshop organizer, the limited number of spots — only 10 — is due to the physical space of the room and the nature of the material to be handled. “The newspaper is a large medium that takes up a lot of space. To ensure that students can work safely and comfortably, we prioritize small groups,” explains Simone Moreira, responsible for the project.
Simone also highlights the importance of the workshop not only as a formative action but also as a preservation strategy for the collection: “This material is rare and needs to be cleaned and oxygenated at least twice a year. Unfortunately, the Foundation does not have enough staff to carry out this work alone, due to the large volume of documents. Therefore, we establish partnerships with universities and the community. Participants learn the techniques and, in return, help us conserve this important heritage.”
During the workshop, newspapers such as “A Província” and “O Liberal,” with editions from the 1980s and 1990s, will be restored. However, the Foundation's collection is much older: the oldest newspaper in its custody is “O Paraense,” from 1822, which is in good condition thanks to continuous preventive care actions carried out over the years.
Text by Maurício Carvalho / Ascom FCP
