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The Wool Museum mission is the safeguarding and the active preservation of the patrimony of the textile industry, as well as, the research and the disclosure of technologies associated with both the manufacturing and the industrialisation of the wool industry. The Wool Museum tries to understand the territorial and the organisational context of this activity in an extensive area that has Serra da Estrela as a matrix and as a historic centre the city of Covilhã. It also takes into consideration the anthropological, economical, social, cultural, political, constitutional and environmental aspects involved in that activity.
Purposes and aims
From all the Museum purposes and aims, we focus on the following:
- Provide an accurate preservation of the museological and documental remains under its protection;
- Promote and contribute to the development of scientific research on the wool industrialisation history, the industrial patrimony and archaeology and the wool industry in several levels (economical, social, technological, artistic and cultural);
- Promote and contribute to the safeguarding and preservation of the movable and immovable industrial patrimony and the documental patrimony related to the wool industry;
- Contribute to rise in value of the wool as a potential fibre of a sustainable development and an ecological balance;
- Contribute to the wool craft memory revival, both locally and regionally – the city of Covilhã and Serra da Estrela region – and at a national level;
- Reconstruct the wool cloths dyeing process more used in Portugal, mainly until the end of the 18th Century, and, also the techniques and the technologies inherent in the wool industrialisation process between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century;
- Implement and develop the pedagogical-educational component, as it is intended to reach the school public in the several teaching stages and more specifically the students of the University of Beira Interior, since the Museum is settled in it;
- Contribute to the creation and development of an European textile information network;
- Contribute to the local and regional development, either through the tourist definition of a Wool Route at a regional, national and European level or through the invigorating of the wool industry, by providing its privileged agents with patrimonial resources, like informative resources.
