Making women’s work visible, valuing Cerrado sweets and promoting the use of its fruits in Gastronomy: the case of the Gastronomic Festival of Arraias (TO)

Abstract

The production of Gastronomic Festivals to promote Tourism in small towns and, mainly, as a way of valuing traditional cuisine has gained strength in recent years among Brazilian municipalities. Normally this movement is supported by local city halls or cultural development agencies. In response to this movement, the Arraias Gastronomic Festival – TO was created, an event led by teachers and students from the Heritage and Socio-Environmental Tourism course at the Federal University of Tocantins. The project involves three in-person editions (2017, 2018 and 2019), and in 2020, when all of humanity was going through the COVID-19 Pandemic, it was necessary to rethink the format of the event, which resulted in a hybrid festival proposal, in a competition between jams, jellies and liqueurs that involved participants from more than twenty Brazilian municipalities located in the Cerrado biome. Therefore, this article aims to socialize the main results of this proposal, which had as its main objectives the visibility of female work, the valorization of cerrado sweets and the promotion of the use of cerrado fruits in gastronomy.