Everyone’s hands
About the XIII International Colloquium Arts for Childhood and Social and Human Development that took place on November 25, 2023 at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
The 13th International Meeting on Art for Children and Social and Human Development took place on November 25, as always, at the Gulbenkian Foundation, in a room facing the garden. On an autumnal day, the 25 years of a transdisciplinary music company were celebrated with very different guests who contributed with their grain of sand. They sowed a seed that, next year, will become a plant.
Whose countless hand is this? If there were one sentence to sum up the 13th International Meeting on Art for Children and Social and Human Development, it would be this question. The question of what the innumerable hand of artists is, this hand that touches, caresses, builds, destroys and builds again. Who is it, what is it for, how many hands are we talking about? One would be enough, really. And maybe that’s what it’s all about. One hand that is, at the same time, many. This edition celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Companhia de Música Teatral (CMT). 25 years that leave a fertile trail and open up to the future.
Helena Rodrigues, one of the founders of the group and the organizer of this meeting, will talk about this. But first, we’ll hear another voice, that of António Nóvoa, promoting a reflection on the future of education.
The importance of the five Cs
The holder of the UNESCO Futures of Education Chair and honorary rector of the University of Lisbon brought to Gulbenkian the idea that we can’t just talk about one future, but several. And that this requires “openness and attention”. There are five key ideas that we urgently need to think about. At the basis of all of them is an idea by French philosopher Olivier Reboul, who answers the question ‘what is school for?’ as follows: “School, education, are for us to be free and not be alone.”
For this reason, it’s not surprising that the first concept to be mentioned is that of ‘cooperation’. “Pedagogy is about working cooperatively with each other. The school was built around the extraordinary idea of the relationship between the teacher and the student,” explains António Nóvoa. But if there is something irreplaceable in this relationship, the student also learns from their peers. Artists have never forgotten this idea, but schools – unfortunately – have. And we need to recover it so that art can re-enter education, in other words, “so that the discomfort of artistic work in an [educational] institution fades away and has new possibilities”.
Another term to think about is ‘convergence’. Today, there is a vertical and isolated organization of the school curriculum, in which the boundaries between knowledge are too defined. It is necessary to create the opposite energy, the bringing together of knowledge, taking what is necessary from the arts, mathematics, history, which should not function as “immutable slices” of knowledge that don’t blend with each other. “The job of a math teacher isn’t to teach math: it’s to form a human being through mathematics,” he explains. This approach increases the responsibility of this discipline – or any other – since what counts is the dynamics of human formation. Quoting the latest book by Portuguese neuroscientist António Damásio, “O Saber e o Sentir”, António Nóvoa appeals to our imagination: if it were possible to empty someone of all their emotional dimension, at that very moment they would no longer be able to learn or carry out any cognitive activity.
This leads to the crucial importance of ‘collaboration’, which “defines the work of teachers”. According to Brazilian anthropologist and historian Darcy Ribeiro, the public school is the “greatest invention in the world” – and “the little elementary school teacher” have been the one who educated the world. But these teachers and educators of the world must think together, in a ‘co-labor-in-action’ indicated by the very etymology of the term. And that has a lot to do with ‘conviviality’ as a precondition for the place where we learn to live with others. Alain, the French philosopher whose baptismal name was Émile-Auguste Chartier, argued that we are educated precisely by our differences. “That’s why school is a radically different institution from everyone’s home,” António Nóvoa reflects.
For all these reasons, the last idea synthesizes and contains the previous ones. It is the word ‘common’, used here in the sense borrowed from John Dewey, “this century’s most important thinker on education”. He said: “Never forget that the word ‘common’ is the root of community and communication.” And educational work leads – or forces – to both: to go outside, to find a connection with the outside, to an interpenetration between what is inside and outside the school space.
Today we are going through a time of “profound transformation of the school and educational model”. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the one that has been in place since the 19th century isn’t (even now) extraordinary. The classroom, the blackboard are not to be discarded. “But that’s not enough, it has to be rebuilt from an idea of school that has the five premises described here”, explains the professor, noting that, for him, “these five things have always been at the heart of artistic work”.
It is impossible to give up hope that education will play a transformative role. However, in order to do so, it must transform itself.
The innumerable hand or the unique hands
Now it’s Helena Rodrigues’ turn to recall how and when the CMT was created. And this happened with a first performance entitled “O Gato das Notas”, made for Expo 98. And from which it is possible to state, as the company’s motto: “Art brings the possibility of being other, of following various paths within our freedom.” Drawing on memories forged over 25 years, there are pairs of eyes that eternally remain. Like those of the 7-year-old child who, at the end of a show, approached Helena and touched her to check on her reality. Like those of Helena Afonso, who played the cat in that first play, and who is present among the audience at this meeting.
If it were possible to cover a quarter of a century showing its key moments through postcards, another that would emerge would be that of the GermInArte project, which between 2015 and 2018 brought together educators, teachers, mediators and caregivers. “We want to be free and not be alone” is, in essence, what guided this collective experience, year after year. Particular attention deserves the participation of children of all ages and many structures with which CMT has made partnerships. And the conclusion turned out to be that processes are more important than ends.
Education for 2050
From Spain comes the voice of Maravillas Diaz, PhD in Philosophy and Educational Sciences and retired professor at the University of the Basque Country, for a presentation entitled: “What moment is art experiencing in basic education? Imagining the future.” Sometimes, to think about the future, it’s necessary to go back in time: “When I started in the 1970s, I would never have imagined that today there would be so much research done or underway on art in early childhood education.” The issue, for this academic, is that the immense amount of existing research is not generating the expected results. Signs of discontinuity are accumulating, and cultural agents hardly communicate. “This is problematic and very sad,” she comments.
A glance at UNESCO’s report on the arts in education “invites for a deep reflection”. For example, it calls for a re-examination of education in order to promote fairer and more sustainable scenarios. And not to run away from the commitment to think about “the education we want for 2050”. What should we do? The answer is neither unambiguous nor immutable, but it will have to involve processes that focus on exclusion and emancipation. This will require reformulating old and “clearly insufficient” models. The present can no longer ‘sleep’ peacefully on these models.
Terrestrial and stellar geographies
It’s up to composer Paulo Maria Rodrigues, in CMT’s 25th anniversary, to bring to the meeting what the company he helped to found has achieved over the course of 2023. And to get the audience started on this task, there’s nothing like recalling the leitmotif that has run through all the projects. “The artistic projects we’ve been doing are laboratories where we experiment, take music and mix it with other arts,” he says, stressing that it’s not only about making art, but about “what it can do for people and the environment around them”. The idea of “tuning people, birds and flowers” has been very important, especially in recent years, i.e. the notion of a harmony of various elements that only artistic activity can achieve.
Paulo Maria Rodrigues shows us a complex map containing the artistic-educational constellations generated by each project. More than a map, it resembles a set of molecules seen through a microscope. From one, by subdivision, others have emerged, and more others. “A Thousand Birds”, for example, became gradually more complex until it had several subdivisions and satellite projects. They have been exposed in various kindergardens in Vila Nova de Famalicão, a municipality that has a close relationship with CMT, with “Cidade Orizuro”, an installation “that calls for interaction, viewing and manipulation”, based on the question: “What would a city be like where our desires could materialize?”
Then there are the “portable” pieces, such as “PaPI Opus 8”, which toured classrooms and libraries. Or “Opus 9”, a piece about water, which was born directly from the mother piece “Aguário”. Related to this are the Water Workshops and the Acquarumori project, an aquatic installation in Castelo de Vide. From “Canção da Terra”, created on 2022, that was presented in Lagoa and Loulé on 2023, cultural mediation activities were added this year in Loulé, the same town that hosted “i.Lab Mil Pássaros #2023”, an immersive art training for children that included a final performance.
The “Deep Listening Deep Sea(ing)” sound factory continues, an imaginary sound cartography of what the bottom of the sea might sound like. In Serpa, the Porcelain and Crystal Gamelan project goes on. In Albergaria-a-Velha, the “Inventory of Fruits” exhibition took place. Here, as well as in Évora, there was “Dooo-Ba-Wooo” for babies and children. The “Ornitópera” gained a new constellation, also linked to birds, and which “perhaps” – says Paulo Maria Rodrigues – is an opera, as a convergence of various arts.
In January, on Eugénio de Andrade’s 100th birthday, we returned to him like we returned home. In Fundão, we heard the poet spoken by ordinary people, who also told their own stories. The process lasted till June and culminated in a installation. “Com Palavras Amo” (I love with words – this title comes from one of the poems of Eugénio de Andrade).
Besides that, as part of the SenseSquared Project, CMT invited educators from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal to take part in “z.lab Mil Pássaros” – an immersive online training in art for children. And there is an ongoing partnership with the Ur_GENTE collective in Guinea-Bissau, under which CMT has already made three trips to that African country to offer five full training courses.
Of utopias sowed like plants
The smile of Carolina Rodrigues, coordinator of the Ur_GENTE project, crosses thousands of kilometers from the Transdisciplinary Performing Arts Centre in Bissau to Lisbon, via zoom. Living in that country for 13 years, she is surrounded by the trainees who are part of this “concrete and poetic utopia”, made possible by the NGO Vida, and whose title is based on Eugénio de Andrade’s verse – “love is urgent”. The initiative began in 2021 and the idea is to sow in order to reap… art in the future. “We believe it’s urgent to move people,” says Carolina.
Two emissaries from the project and also CMT trainees were present at the Gulbenkian. For Mussa, it was “a huge new experience”, in which they were challenged to develop their own experiences based on what they had – in terms of local and cultural characteristics. For Bruno, in turn, CMT brought “a new way of looking at theater”.
And what are there more words for? What followed was a live performance by a group that enthusiastically shuffled the artistic materials collected. Dance and theater, all mixed together in an embrace that shortens any distance.
Once upon a time there was an imaginary boy
“Once upon a time” is a good way to start an intervention. In this case, linked to music in the community, where “music is rarely a goal in itself, but a way of reaching out to the community and fostering relationships”. These are the words of Jorge Graça, who studied the subject in his doctoral thesis. And they serve to introduce a story about an imagined boy. Stories, says Jorge Graça, are basic elements of human societies. What’s more, “fiction has the power to be clearer and more real than reality”. That’s why the boy-character Vitorino could be any one of us.
He didn’t study much, nor did he need to. He did well at school and played an instrument. When he reached his teens, he thought about becoming a musician, which his parents considered “risky”. Even so, they enrolled him at the Conservatoire. But the boy never played well enough. Nevertheless, when he reached higher education, he decided on music. But “he quickly realized that the more he studied, the more distant he became from being a musician”. Vitorino wanted to be one, but he realized that he had never really made music until then.
What did he learn? “That schooling atomizes musicians.” And so, just so, he became the musician he was destined to be.
The gibberish as a communicational instrument
Rita Mendes and Ana Silva came to the Meeting to present their Master’s research on “Gibberish”, which seeks to “analyze the musicality of this type of speech and think about its possibilities in the classroom”. It is a speech based on “meaningless vocal production”, similar to the sounds made by babies. Using the PRAAT software, used to analyze the human voice, they were able to measure three variables in different speeches: timing, frequency and intensity.
And what they discovered, in the context of a classroom, “is the richness of this speech for improvisation” and its potential as a tool for working with children. There’s nothing like an example to broaden our understanding of what this is all about: when faced with a pupil who refused to use his voice, Gibberish had a liberating effect. “He always wanted to participate and hear himself on the recordings,” told the students.
Music as healing voice
The work of this elementary school music teacher is aimed at children with multiple disabilities. João Reigado, who also has a doctorate in Musical Sciences from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and is a member of CESEM, explores non-verbal communication with children whose speech may be compromised, focusing on facial and musical expression, touch, movement and dance as modes of approach and communication. Based on Colwyn Trevarthen theories, he argues that “there is a natural predisposition in babies to respond to the prosody of the human voice”, an interaction which, when it happens, “involves a regular cadence and a communicative musicality”. Music, he stresses, far from being a by-product of language, evolved at the same time as it did.
In the context of his work, João Reigado uses the voice “as an anchor for building emotional relationships” with children with multiple disabilities. The aim of the sessions is the “free exploration of sounds” and the use of the body as an instrument for expressing musical elements. In sessions ranging from 30′ to 40′, in groups but also individually, it is crucial to focus on the profile of ‘functionality versus disability’. “According to Edwin Gordon,” explains the teacher, “there are four elements to take into account in these sessions”: repetition, silence, variety and improvisation. All of these elements are also present in the learning of the mother tongue. Like her, music “must be central to educational responses”.
Care is a kind of song played everywhere
With a degree in choral conducting from the Lisbon School of Music, and completing her doctorate at the University of Aveiro, Ágata Ricca came to Gulbenkian to share what she learned about the ethics of care during a trip through four countries: Lebanon, Benin, Greece and Mozambique. She went to the first of them to “observe choirs that use musical practices for social purposes”, namely the role that music plays in the coexistence of two adjoining neighborhoods in conflict, where one supports the Syrian government and the other does not.
Observation is part of a musician’s life, but it’s not disconnected from practice. In Mozambique, Ágata arrived at the Xiquitsi project, inspired by the famous Venezuelan El Sistema, in June 2019. The music genre they practice is classical and, in this case, they were working on an opera. The conductor liked so much to participate that in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, she became the choir’s teacher, holding rehearsals via WhatsApp. In 2022, they met again face to face, and she was able to implement a “less hierarchical” type of work in which the students sometimes took the baton and directed their colleagues.
The trip to Benin was part of a Musicians Without Borders training course, that took place at Maison Familial, a home for orphaned children leaving voodoo convents. The trip to Greece happened under the initiative of Lifting Hands International, for two months “facilitating musical sessions” in the Yazidi community, an ethnic group that is still persecuted today and has been the target of genocide by the Islamic State. Caring is also part of the musical activity. “Caring means adapting, not imposing. To arrive, to work, to adapt to reality and context. Care is a universal and non-discriminatory concept,” says Ágata, pointing out that, personally, all these experiences have represented ” the failure of the idea that the conventional choir is replicable in all contexts”. Choir is collective singing. And a micro-society. A way of spreading “generalized care.”
A place for hope
Veronika Cohen speaks to us all from Israel, where the war that is currently raging will have profound repercussions. This emeritus professor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, who played an important role in the creation of the Middle Eastern Music Department at the academy, has been promoting dialog between Palestinians and Israelis through her work. And his question to the audience has the urgency of a matter of life and death: “How can we save each other?” The question contains hope, but also fear, on a level that is difficult to describe. “The world is on the brink, one more act of evil and it will implode,” says the researcher, for whom the future of tomorrow’s adults “is in our hands and depends on our decision”.
But is it time to talk about art for children if we can’t even protect them? The answer is yes, it’s still time. Because we need art to survive. Veronika showed an emotional video produced by young people who witnessed the horrific attack that Hamas launched against Israel on October 7th. She then presented the work of the Jerusalem Youth Choir, in which young Arabs and Jews performed “a musical prayer for peace”. This mixed choir was founded 14 years ago on the initiative of a conductor whom Veronika tried to dissuade. “I told him it wasn’t the best time,” she recalls. “Fortunately, he didn’t listen.”
Art for those who need it most
As the meeting ended, the documentary “Mil Pássaros no Bairro Padre Cruz” (A Thousand Birds in the Padre Cruz Neighborhood), directed by Luís Margalhau, was exhibited. It is a film about the CMT project carried out there by Inês Rodrigues da Silva and Gustavo Paixão with the elderly and children, with the support of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa. And what we see is the flow of wings that the participants in these sessions have developed. In the end, they were all birds, ready to fly.
At this point, we all were birds ready to fly, but not without first seeing the famous diva Maria Pavone who, although not a bird, had a few feathers. The CMT 25 Years Awards, a (trans)national event, was about to be presented. There were several nominees and winners. But nobody who was present in the auditorium failed. In fact, we all can be considered as winners.
