Post-fire recovery is commonly assessed through ecological restoration, infrastructure reconstruction and economic recovery. However, while landscapes can regenerate and damaged assets can be rebuilt, the emotional and social impacts experienced by affected communities often remain insufficiently addressed. Loss of family members, friends, animals, homes, memories and sense of place may persist long after the flames are extinguished, affecting wellbeing, social cohesion and community resilience. Despite growing recognition of environmental trauma and ecological grief, these dimensions remain largely absent from post-fire recovery strategies.

This work presents an innovative experience developed in Santa Comba Dão, Portugal, one of the municipalities most severely affected by the 2017 wildfires. Seven years after the disaster, a collaborative initiative brought together the artistic project Lament, the FIRE-RES project, local authorities, researchers, psychologists, firefighters and community members. The initiative explored how art and community engagement can support emotional recovery and strengthen resilience in wildfire-affected territories.

The approach combined artistic co-creation, community participation and action-research, giving rise to a set of restorative community practices designed to create safe spaces for reflection, dialogue and collective healing. Through storytelling, creative workshops and collaborative mapping exercises, residents, students, volunteer firefighters and local leaders contributed to the creation of a Collective Scar Map, integrating memories, emotions and representations of the territory. The process enabled participants to share experiences of loss while identifying sources of hope, solidarity and resilience.

Results revealed that emotional impacts remained highly present years after the wildfire, highlighting the need to complement conventional recovery measures with approaches that acknowledge environmental trauma and collective grief. Participants valued the opportunity to share experiences, preserve memories and rebuild connections with both their community and landscape. Beyond documenting trauma, the process strengthened social bonds, fostered trust and helped transform memories of disaster into narratives of resilience and collective agency. The initiative was subsequently recognised by the European Commission as a Green Deal Success Story for its innovative integration of art, science and community engagement in post-disaster recovery.

A key outcome was the development of the Toolkit “Art and Community Engagement as Restorative Practices in Contexts of Environmental Trauma and Grief”, providing practical guidance for replicating similar approaches in other wildfire-affected regions.

The findings suggest that post-fire recovery should be understood not only as the restoration of ecosystems and infrastructures, but also as a process of rebuilding wellbeing, social cohesion and community identity. Beyond supporting emotional recovery, the experience invites reflection on how communities reconnect with damaged landscapes after extreme wildfire events. By addressing trauma, memory, grief and collective resilience, restorative community practices contribute not only to healing people, but also to rebuilding relationships between communities, forests and territories in a changing climate, supporting broader discussions on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, ecological grief and planetary health.