Mil Pássaros combines artistic creation, training and community involvement through a set of artistic-educational experiences of different kinds in which people are encouraged to listen to the “voice” of the birds. The name of the project comes from a Japanese tradition according to which if you build a thousand birds while thinking about a wish, the wish will come true.
Mil Pássaros em Coimbra was developed with the collaboration of educators, educational assistants, and children from 48 kindergarten classrooms in the Municipality of Coimbra. It included training sessions for educators and celebrated the world of birds by promoting and hosting activities in the kindergartens, such as the Oficina dos Pássaros and PaPI – Opus 8, a theatrical music piece. The Gabinete do Pássaro oversaw the whole process, contributing to the good quality of the artistic-educational practices with the pre-school community and always in perfect harmony with the mediation teams from the Education Division and the Convento São Francisco.
Families were also invited to get involved in the project, and were challenged to take their children to listen to the birds, enjoy the green spaces and build Orizuros (paper birds), which were integrated into the installation on display at the Convento São Francisco between June and September 2024, that continues to evolve, welcoming all those who want to create their own Orizuro while wishing for a better world. The Mil Pássaros installation symbolizes a collective will and a common desire to take care of the planet where we live.
The Team
Conception: Companhia de Música Teatral; Co-production: Municipio de Coimbra and Companhia de Música Teatral; Participating institutions: JI de Almas de Freire (2 classrooms); JI de Almedina; JI de Ameal; JI de Andorinha; JI de Antuzede; JI de Areeiro (2 classrooms); JI de Arzila; JI de Bairro Azul (2 classrooms); JI de Bairro Norton de Matos (2 classrooms); JI de Brasfemes (2 classrooms); JI de Casais (2 classrooms); JI de Ceira 2 classrooms); JI de Eiras (2 classrooms); JI de Ingote; JI de Larçã; JI de Loreto (2 classrooms); JI de Olivais (3 classrooms); JI de Póvoa; JI da Quinta das Flores (3 classrooms); JI de Ribeira de Frades; JI de Santa Apolónia (2 classrooms); JI de São Bartolomeu; JI de São Bento (2 classrooms); JI de São João do Campo (2 classrooms); JI de São Martinho de Árvore; JI de Solum; JI de Solum-Sul (2 classrooms); JI de Souselas; JI de Taveiro; JI de Trouxemil e JI de Vila Verde. Of the school groups: Coimbra Centro; Coimbra Oeste; Coimbra Sul; Eugénio de Castro; Martim de Freitas e Rainha Santa Isabel; Collaboration: Minerva – Centro de Formação da Associação de Escolas; Acknowledgments: NOVA-FCSH; Universidade de Aveiro
Gabinete do Pássaro: Ana Isabel Pereira (coordinator), Gustavo Paixão, Inês Rodrigues da Silva, Mariana Caldeira Pinto, Mariana Vences, Rita Roberto; t. lab Mil Pássaros – Formação transitiva em Arte para a Infância: Mariana Vences and Rita Roberto; PaPI – Opus 8: Inês Rodrigues da Silva, Mariana Caldeira Pinto; Oficina do Pássaro: Mariana Vences; Inês Rodrigues da Silva, Adriana Lopes; Instalação Mil Pássaros: Miguel Ferraz, Paulo Maria Rodrigues; Rita Roberto, Mariana Vences, Jorge Graça, Design of interactive systems and sound capture: Élio Moreira, Jorge Graça; Advice: Paulo F. Rodrigues; Educational resource management: Helena Rodrigues; Artistic director: Paulo Maria Rodrigues; General coordination: Artur Silva; Mediation: Catarina Moura; Joana Nogueira (CSF); Ana Paula Fernandes (CMC); Dora Simões (CMC) Coordination: Filipe Carvalho (CSF) and Maria Carlos Pêgo (CSF); Video documentary: Luis Margalhau; Graphic design: Mafalda Maia.
Context
The project has been in progress for some time. The groundwork began in 2023 with the I Encontro Arte-Ambiente, and its second edition in January 2024 marked the beginning of the outreach work with kindergartens. For six months, training sessions were held for the community of professionals, to encourage educators to develop their own interventions in interaction with the children’s families and caregivers.
Establishing bridges between education and culture, Mil Pássaros em Coimbra has reached the community of professionals from the participating kindergartens and over a thousand families throughout the municipality, who have come together for a common goal. Mil Pássaros combines artistic creation, training and community involvement through a series of artistic-educational experiences of different kinds that encourage people to listen to the “voice” of birds. It seeks to help raise awareness of the fragility of the planet we live on and to alert to the need to take care of it. Mil Pássaros launches an appeal to “listen to the birds”, as a metaphor for joining the community in taking care of the environment and in the hope of listening to each other better.
Mil Pássaros promotes musical and artistic experiences by bringing families and kindergartens into dialogue, raising awareness about listening to our soundscape as well as our inner selves. A project that promotes the construction of educational foundations for long-term results, raising questions that need to be addressed from early childhood.
In Coimbra, the Mil Pássaros project involved 48 classes from 31 kindergartens, out of a total of 34 in the municipality’s public network, 48 kindergarten teachers and 127 operational assistants, as well as the families of the more than 1,000 children aged three to six who were directly involved. The project provides musical and artistic experiences, and promotes the dialogue between children, their families and educators, and thus facilitates the building of educational foundations for long-term results, raising questions that need to be addressed from early childhood. The involvement of educators allows them to bring educational practices that value individual and collective artistic expression and enjoyment to the children in their institution as well as their families.
The Process
The project is the result of collaboration between the Companhia de Música Teatral (CMT) and Coimbra City Council (Câmara Municial de Coimbra) in an intersectoral partnership between the Convent São Francisco Division, the Education Division and the Culture Division. In 2023, a strong commitment was made to raising awareness among direct actors and to planning and preparing the project. After an initial phase of raising awareness among the school community, the project began to materialize with the II Encontro Arte-Ambiente: This preliminary training resulted in five distinct “nests” made up of educators and a member of the Gabinete do Pássaro who gave personalized support to each member of their nest throughout the project.
The action t.Lab Mil Pássaros – Formação Transitiva em Arte (Transitional Training in Art), which deals holistically and transversally with artistic expressions and environmental education, provided participants with a set of concepts and methodologies to fully enjoy the project’s reception in their own kindergarten. The permanent listening support provided by the Gabinete do Pássaro aimed, through close contact, to facilitate the development of good practices in each kindergarten classroom. Complementing the autonomous work carried out in each classroom, the visit of the Oficina dos Pássaros was an opportunity to experience in real context the concepts and experiences of the training, and the world of birds was celebrated with the theatrical music show PaPI – Opus 8, designed specifically for this context.
At the same time and on an almost weekly basis, Canto dos Pássaros – Musicalidade Comunicativa na Educação de Infância provided time for personal development and collaborative work between professionals from different kindergartens through vocal and movement practice.
Keeping the children at the heart of the project, families were also invited to get involved in the project, being challenged to incorporate listening to birds, enjoying green spaces and taking care of the environment in their homes. The construction of the Orizuro (a paper bird) is each child’s embodiment of this awakened awareness.
t.Lab – Conferência dos Pássaros e Partilha de práticas educativas is a conference-performance which begins by addressing the creative process behind Mil Pássaros (ecological, musical and educational issues, as well as work processes) and then opens up a space for sharing, reflection and debate with the community participating in the project.
The process culminates with the Mil Pássaros installation at the Convento São Francisco, which invites people to join forces (children, their families, kindergarten teachers and all professional and family caregivers) in caring for the environment, demonstrating the transformative power of the “countless hand”. Mil Pássaros is, in short, the result of a shared process in which imagination is given wings, summoning the strength and beauty of a collective will.
