The work of the Companhia de Música Teatral is the creation of “artistic-educational constellations”: in this work model, different forms of creation and artistic and educational intervention are generated from an original artistic object, enhancing the relationships between all the constellation elements.
The Mil Pássaros (One Thousand Birds) Constellation articulates artistic creation, training and community involvement through a set of artistic-educational experiences of a different nature in which people are encouraged to listen to the “voice” of birds. In this way, we seek to help raise awareness of the fragility of the planet we live on and to draw attention to the need to take care of it.
Mil Pássaros is inspired by a Japanese legend, according to which a wish comes true if you build a thousand orizurus (a tsuru or an orizuru is a bird made of paper following the origami technique), while thinking about that same wish. In the second half of the twentieth century, after the bombing of Hiroshima, the orizuru became a symbol of the desire for peace and the need for a spirit of union in the construction of a more harmonious world.
Mil Pássaros launches the appeal to “listen to the birds”, as a metaphor for joining the community in caring for the environment and in the hope of listening to each other better.
Mil Pássaros promotes musical and artistic experiences, bringing families and nurseries/kindergartens/schools into dialogue, in an awareness of listening to the soundscape and listening to interiority. A project that promotes the construction of educational foundations for long-term results, raising issues that must be addressed from early childhood.
Mil Pássaros em Coimbra (One Thousand Birds in Coimbra) is an anchor project of strategic scope for the Municipality of Coimbra, which is aimed at the entire pre-school community in the municipality of Coimbra, in an intersectoral articulation between the Education Division, the Culture Division and the of the São Francisco Convent of the City Hall.
The project will run throughout 2023 and 2024, involving 52 pre-school classes distributed across 34 school establishments, their respective educators and operational assistants, families of participating children and other caregivers. In addition to an intense training component, activities will be developed in the Kindergartens and there will be a large presence in the Convento São Francisco, where activities of a complementary nature will be developed to bring together diverse audiences in a large community.