Project Summary
The MUSICAR Project was conceived and implemented by Metropolitana – Associação Música, Educação e Cultura, a non-profit organisation based in Lisbon (Portugal) with the mission of disseminating classical music through public concerts, music teaching and socio-cultural activities. Metropolitana manages two orchestras – the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa and the Orquestra Académica Metropolitana – and three schools – the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra (higher education), the Escola Profissional Metropolitana (technical education) and the
Conservatório de Música da Metropolitana (primary and secondary level).
With MusicAIRE’s support, an initiative co-funded by the European Union to support the music industry, the project ran from February to November 2023 with the goal of identifying and testing teaching and learning skills for individual and ensemble musical practice specifically geared towards blind or low-vision students and deaf students.
The project was structured in different phases:
It began by calling on civil society players with similar vocations to take part in laboratory discussions. It then involved all Metropolitana employees and professionals from other schools along 12 training sessions on different themes for teachers, musicians, educational assistants, administrative staff, production, communication and public relations staff. Professionals with experience in their respective fields were invited as trainers.
This provided an opportunity to meet and share ideas and knowledge which guided the next steps. Noteworthy were the partnerships established with the Filarmónica Enarmonia (Bengala Mágica) and Mãos que Cantam projects.
Once reached the most practical phase of the project, there were four exploratory workshops followed by 10 weeks of regular individual instrument lessons and ensemble classes leading up to a public concert on November 29th at the São Luiz Theater, in Lisbon, with works by Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi and Lino Guerreiro.
This Final Concert included the participation of the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa and its Artistic Director Pedro Neves, the Mãos que Cantam choir and its conductor Sérgio Peixoto, the blind conductor Adrian Rincón, the blind pianist Jorge Gonçalves and all the MUSICAR students, namely the MUSICAR Participatory Choir, made up of 32 singers, 10 of wich blind, and a bass drum ensemble made up of 50 deaf students from the Parque Silva Porto primary school, the Quinta de Marrocos secondary school and the Adult Training and Qualification Course at the Jacob Rodrigues Pereira School of Casa Pia de Lisboa.
This concert was attended by 528 people. The theater was sold out because part of the seats were taken up by the dozens of deaf participants in the project who played bass drums in the last piece, namely the absolute premiere of a work expressly commissioned to the composer Lino Guerreiro for this occasion.
The different actions of the MUSICAR project were recorded in audio and
video for the production and publication of promotional teasers and a video
documentary. A Specialized Teaching Unit was also established within the teaching staff.
Context and Overall Objectives
Music teaching specifically focused on people who are blind or have low vision and people who are deaf is in extremely short supply throughout the European Union, particularly in Portugal. Formal music teaching, combining theory with practice, is not available to students whose condition carries a stigma that, in itself, leads to exclusion or a tendency towards self-taught learning.
Many studies prove that, regardless of age, the benefits of learning music for cognitive, affective and motor development are very beneficial for all those who have this privilege. It is therefore a right of citizenship that needs to be debated in the context of combating inequalities and discrimination against differences, also in terms of access to culture and the arts.
With this project the Metropolitana team set out to discuss and test solutions applied to the teaching and learning of music theory and vocal or instrumental practice for these students. The aim was to understand the community’s interest in and support for this area of training and to identify the logistical and human resources needed to guarantee regular, quality teaching. In this sense, the beneficiaries of this project were those who set out to explore and learn, as well as all those who contributed in some way to its implementation: students, family members, teachers, the general public and the community.
The regular lessons – individual and ensemble – although they took place
over a relatively short period of time, just 10 weeks, aimed to provide a conclusive experience and the opportunity to assess the intrinsic competences of the teaching and learning process itself, such as commitment, teamwork, self-reinforcement, concentration, frustration and overcoming difficulties. Training music teachers to teach the blind and deaf was another of the goals, in order to create familiarity with the difference and provide the acquisition of fundamental skills to teach these students in the future, whether at the Metropolitana or any other conservatoires.
The conviviality between peers and the contact with the public were intended to give rise to a fraternity that provide the social acceptance of individuals affected by blindness or deafness. For a period of time, albeit limited, the MUSICAR project made it possible to simulate a situation in which these communities are not deprived of musical learning, whether due to insufficient training of the teaching and non- teaching staff at the conservatoires, the lack of a suitable administrative organisation, sufficient and adapted logistical resources, or simply the lack of awareness in society of this reality, including among the blind, the deaf and their families.
The classes with motivated teachers, the rehearsals with an orchestra of professional musicians – including the blind, the deaf and people who see and hear – as well as the conditions offered by a fully-equipped theatre of reference, wanted to demonstrate that extraordinary results can be achieved as long as the necessary conditions are met and there are equal opportunities.
More generally, the initiative sought to make a modest contribution to developing the autonomy of all those who want to learn or teach music, regardless of their circumstances, and thus enable everyone to fully enjoy the world of the arts. Beyond social networks, social awareness of this reality inevitably passes through places of representation and encounter such as classrooms and theatre stages.