The Municipality of Penafiel and Hoopers , a basketball community platform are the promoters of the project. The urban art interventions were performed by Matilde Horta , a local artist, and Flix . Penafiel becomes the first city to simultaneously launch two new iconic courts along with the Portuguese startup.
Penafiel and Hoopers, a basketball community platform, have joined forces and renovated two basketball courts in the city.
The Quinta das Lages field, renovated by Flix, gained a 3×3 court and it is located next to the city’s main sports hub and a big scholar area, which should boost its use by the entire local community.
The second court, located in a residential area, received an intervention by Matilde Horta, an artist born in Penafiel. She redesigned the existing 5×5 court, which was quite used by the local community and basketball clubs during the lockdown period. The project was even more special for the artist because this court was located next to her grandparent’s residence.
For Antonino de Sousa, Mayor of Penafiel , “this project is the product of a great combination of sport, youth and culture. This intervention allowed us to recover two basketball courts in the city, encouraging their use by the population: families, basketball enthusiasts and athletes from the Penafiel Basketball Club. Additionally, it also allowed us to showcase our local talent (Matilde Horta) and international talent (Flix)”.
“This project was a huge challenge for us, because we carried out two interventions simultaneously. We are very satisfied with the final result and we believe that both spaces will be widely used by the community to play formally and informally”, explains André Costa, co-founder of Hoopers.
The interventions were completed and the spaces were opened in a small initiative that brought together the entities involved, the local community and the young players of the Penafiel Basketball Club. The partners of the project were Robbialac , JOPINTO and Sport Design .