The “knowledge promotion and the access to the archival heritage“ in our custody and within our geographical area of intervention, are responsibilities of this Archive, assumed as a natural vocation and enriched by innovating activities in what concerns the guidelines and means provided for their prosecution.
We believe at ADP that the cultural intervention is ruled by the necessary interaction with the local social environment.
We offer several services, diversified possibilities to lead the different publics towards discovery of documents, their informational richness, their formal aesthetic, the functions and significance they bear beyond the present time, the integrating vision of the custodial documents/information, the Archive activities and the social publics/actors with whom the Archive interacts.
As the cultural and education activity is not closed to the outside, we welcome proposals for co-operation in terms of simply providing spaces for events with potential interest or participating in co-productions that will promote the existing cultural heritage.


The Education Service
Within the scope of this activity the Education Service offers a new approach directed to young people training, which is one of our core objectives: the transmission of the collective memory, contributing clearly to the intellectual and critical growth of young people who are visiting us either in person or remotely.
The Education Service intends to be a privileged channel for the effective and efficient communication of the documental fonds which, by their administrative, historical/cultural and informative value, are deemed of permanent conservation. The documents are not, however, the sole object of our activity: using the most different means, onsite and online, our visitors will be also familiarised with the capabilities of Arquivo Distrital do Porto and with the related professional activities. It is a perspective of a global archive that we wish to convey to all our users, not only to students and investigators, using the adequate methodologies: pedagogical, didactical and also of entertainment.
With a view to embracing various publics from schools and groups with plural acting strategies, we suggest also visits with different dynamics and distinct logical-pedagogical resources.
The Education Service encourages thus the contact with the primary sources, develops also habits of research and visit to the archive, and promotes history knowledge (regional, local ….) and the importance of the archival work as a factor of cultural/moral and civic improvement of every citizen.