Some weeks ago (April 30 – May 3), 140 people gathered on Bart van Beuzekom‘s land in the tiny Portuguese village of Cidadelhe. Not just to dance and listen, but above all to dig. Over a few mornings, they built 69 Smilands together: small landscape interventions that hold rainwater and gather dew on ground that is (or was) rapidly turning to desert. The first edition of Ten Lives Genesis Festival was a test run, and as far as Bart is concerned, it exceeded expectations by far.
From syntropic farming to regenerative festival
Bart bought the land in 2021 to test a scalable syntropic farming model. The local farmers couldn’t really make sense of it: “it’s just a way of farming that’s hard to grasp if you’re used to conventional agriculture.” So he found an experienced syntropic team, up for the challenge of a desertifying European landscape, who now work the land year-round. When Louis De Jaeger approached him looking for land to host a regenerative festival, everything fell into place. “It came down to this: we had a team on the ground and wanted to organise a festival, but a couple of years down the line, now all of a sudden Ten Lives Festival who has the same vision as we do, who wants to come in and regenerate land that we wouldn’t be able to even start on for another 10 to 20 years. So we got started.”
What do Smilands actually do?
In an area with little rain and harsh sun, Smilands work in two ways. They slow the rain that does fall, allowing it to sink in rather than run off or evaporate. And they exploit the temperature swing between morning and night: when there’s enough humidity, dew forms on vertical surfaces like long grasses, shrubs, cacti. On a strip just three metres long and thirty centimetres wide, a tiny oasis appears, giving plants with larger leaves a chance to grow alongside the usual lavender, broom, and thyme.
A single Smiland from an earlier pilot is already showing different species than can be seen in the normal landscape. New types of grasses and herbaceous plants – always the first responders to damaged soil – are starting to pop up. The conditions created by the smiland have already managed to help the land jump ahead in the natural succession of plants performing ecological functions… and this is after only a few months. On another test plot nearby, the soil’s organic matter, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium levels all doubled within a year, in ground that would normally only get poorer. Bart: “You see a forest starting to come back, and you can feel the life in it. That’s just incredible.”
Photos by Ten Lives
Dancing, digging, restoring
The festival ran on the rhythm of the climate. From eight to eleven in the morning, people dug. Then came the talks and workshops, on bio-based construction, on consciousness. And from six until midnight, the dancing. Compost toilets, showers rigged on IBC tanks, tents on the ground. “Honestly, it’s a bit like the famous Boom Festival.” Portugal’s representative on biodiversity to the European Commission came and got his hands dirty. The mayor of the area also gave a talk to say how glad she was that it was happening, and people were coming back to the land.
What stood out most, Bart says, was how good it felt to work together on the land: “We could have built Smilands all day with a DJ next to us. Everyone would have been just as happy. Although possibly with some shade once the day started heating up”
Bringing a community back
In the village itself, only a handful of people still live: almost all of them over 75, with just five under that age. The younger generations left long ago: no work, no peers. So at the end of the festival, Bart announced that they’re testing a new stewardship model. Anyone interested can come and volunteer for a month, then potentially do an internship, and eventually write their own plan for a piece of land. The foundation keeps the ownership; you get the right to use it for the rest of your life, as long as you manage it according to syntropic principles. Seven people already signed up on the spot and you can do so too!
And the flying?
A fair question, with visitors flying in from across Europe. Bart’s answer: “Roughly 5 percent of global warming comes from CO2. Ninety-five percent comes from a disrupted water cycle. If you are actually restoring that water cycle, you are solving a bigger problem.” The warming effect of the travel and the cooling effect of restoring two hectares of landscape, he reckons, more or less cancel out. Not ideal, the more local the better. However it has to start somewhere.
Come visit
The Ten Lives team is aiming for a second edition in May 2027, ten times the size. Until then, there’s a volunteer programme, education and research tracks, and space for visitors. What Bart wants you to take away most: “Come visit.”
