Anel Imanbay

At THE CURATED Lisbon, we are interested in the people shaping the cultural and emotional landscape of the city — individuals and initiatives contributing to the way Lisbon is experienced, felt, and imagined today. Beyond institutions and traditional cultural structures, we are particularly drawn to the communities, conversations, and creative ecosystems redefining the identity of contemporary Lisbon.

One of the people contributing to this evolving cultural dialogue is Anel, founder of TEDxMarvila — an independent platform bringing together ideas, creativity, human connection, and cultural exchange within one of Lisbon’s most dynamic creative districts. The project reflects many of the qualities increasingly defining the city itself: openness, emotional intelligence, international perspective, and a strong sense of community.

Today, we speak with Anel about the vision behind TEDxMarvila, the role of cultural initiatives in shaping Lisbon’s creative identity, and why themes such as humanity, connection, and love feel especially relevant in the cultural landscape of the city today.
 

Why has love become such an urgent cultural topic today?
After exploring “The Art of Being Human” in our first edition, the natural question that kept coming back was: what drives us to create, to connect, to act? And the honest answer is love. Not romantic love specifically, but love as a force of motivation. We are living through a moment of enormous collective anxiety. People are more informed than ever and yet more disconnected from meaning. I think love as a concept has become urgent because it is the antidote we keep searching for without always naming it. At TEDxMarvila, we wanted to name it directly. To take it seriously as an intellectual and social question, not a greeting card sentiment.

Can cities be built around emotional values rather than only economics?
I believe cities are already built around emotional values. We just rarely admit it. When urban planners talk about “walkability” or “public space” or “heritage preservation,” they are really talking about belonging, dignity, and care. The language just obscures it. What I find genuinely exciting about Lisbon right now is that the conversation is becoming more honest. You see communities in Marvila pushing for cultural infrastructure alongside residential development. You see the city investing in public art, in neighbourhood events, in river access. These are emotional choices. Whether the pace is fast enough, and whether it benefits everyone, is a harder question. But the instinct is there.

What makes a cultural district truly alive?
Creativity. I think a cultural district dies the moment it becomes too comfortable or too curated. What made Marvila interesting was the friction between its industrial past, its creative community, its new wave of artists and entrepreneurs, and its rapid change. A living cultural district holds those tensions without resolving them too quickly. It allows for impermanence. It makes space for the unexpected. The moment a neighbourhood becomes a branded destination first and a lived community second, something essential leaves. The best thing any organisation like ours can do is support the conditions for that tension to remain productive.

What role do art and cultural experiences play in a world dominated by speed?
They create the pause that allows you to actually feel something. We process an enormous amount of information daily, but very little of it lands in the body. Art and live cultural experiences do something that content cannot. They make you present. At TEDxMarvila, the talks matter, but so does the room, the stranger next to you, the performance you did not expect, the conversation you have at the end of the day that stays with you for weeks. That is not a luxury experience. I think it is a fundamental human need that we have become quite bad at protecting. On top, we also do art exhibition every year. And this year’s exhibition called “The love art first sight”

⁠What does Lisbon give people emotionally that other cities often don’t?
Permission to slow down without feeling like you are failing. In many major cities, stillness feels like a symptom of something wrong. In Lisbon, there is a cultural memory of melancholy, of longing, of sitting with things that are unresolved. Fado is not an accident. It reflects a genuine emotional permission structure that the city still carries. For people arriving from cities where productivity is the only legitimate emotional state, that can be quite disorienting at first. And then deeply liberating. I also think Lisbon’s scale matters. It is large enough to be genuinely cosmopolitan but small enough that you still encounter the same people repeatedly. That repetition creates the conditions for real community.

How do you see the relationship between global culture and local identity evolving in Lisbon?
Lisbon is genuinely one of the most interesting places to observe this question right now. The city is attracting people from all over the world while simultaneously experiencing a strong renewed interest in its own cultural roots. What strikes me is that these two forces are not necessarily in opposition. Many of the international community members I encounter here are deeply curious about Portuguese culture, history, and language. And many Portuguese people are energised by the new perspectives and collaborations that a more international city makes possible.
TEDxMarvila sits somewhere in the middle of that. We conduct the event in English and offer live Portuguese translation, because we want both communities in the same room, engaging with the same ideas. Whether that balance is always easy to maintain is another question. But I think the effort itself is worth making. The most productive conversations tend to happen at the intersection, not on either side of it.

What cultural projects or ideas are currently inspiring you most?
The work being done around East Lisbon’s gallery network genuinely excites me. There are extraordinary spaces in Marvila and the surrounding area that most of Lisbon’s own residents have never seen. Last year, we are presented what we believe is the first consolidated map of East Lisbon galleries and artworks, this year we are creating the “Love at First Sight” exhibition as a physical space within the event that brings those gallery communities together. That kind of connective tissue work, making visible what already exists, feels more important to me right now than creating new things. There is so much here that simply needs to be seen.

What does love mean to you today, in the way you live and build community?
Honestly? It has taken me a while to be able to answer this without it sounding like an event tagline.

I think love, for me, is the decision to keep going when something is harder than you thought it would be. Choosing to show up again. The fifth follow-up email. The meeting that almost did not happen. Continuing even if it’s hard and you got no back up.

There is a line from Dante I keep coming back to. The very last line of the Divine Comedy, after everything he has been through: love which moves the sun and the other stars. Not an explanation. Just that. I think he is right. Most of what actually moves in the world, moves because someone cared enough to push it.
That is what I am trying to do with TEDxMarvila. Not perfectly. But genuinely.