comunicação apresentada no IDEA 2007‧ Sixth World Congress‧ July 16-22 ‧Hong Kong

Abstract

MUS-E project in Évora (a historycall city in the south of Portugal) is part of the international network MUS-E – artists in school Programme, founded by Yehudi Menuhin over a decade ago. MUS-E Évora has been focusing it’s activities in Cruz da Picada Elementary School, working towards the integration of ethnical minorities into society through the practice of the arts at school, struggling against social and cultural exclusion.

This paper will point out the methodologies used in the particular training in action process of MUS-E artists, who work both with children and teachers from a interdisciplinary perspective and approach to: music, drama, dance and the visual arts.

In the last academic year (2004-2005), that intensive work resulted in a “Feira do Imaginário” (Fair of fantastic imagery), which was assembled in different public spaces throughout the city. This fair composed of extraordinary out of this world things was thought, created and given life by children and artists, with the precious help of “PIM-Teatro” Theatre Group and EPRE (Évora Detention Centre), and also teachers and families. In such a peculiar fair one could find just about anything for sail: fears and magical potions; wishes and flying hats; dreamed chairs and talking books. There, one could encounter musicians, jugglers, acrobats, and monsters…a setting so familiar to most of these children, many of them descendents of gypsies, sons of shrewd merchants.

We will expose how this intervention resulted in the creation of a particular aesthetic and artistic object of interdisciplinary nature, how it opened up to new bounds of artistic intervention in the community, and how it managed to mobilize partnerships with local cultural/social agents and institutions.

We will continue to question about the artistic objects produced by children. Should it follow aesthetic and formal patterns pre-conceived by adults?