The MUSICAR project made it possible for Metropolitana to co-operate with institutions, entities and individuals (stakeholders) dedicated to visual impairment and deafness. A pilot project, it opened up synergies between partner organisations for the development of artistic-pedagogical and performative musical initiatives over three stages.
To this end, the project brought together and applied intervention practices from a variety of sources previously trialled in artistic projects aimed at including blind and deaf people, previously identified in the application (“Filarmónica Enarmonia” and “Mãos que Cantam” projects), extending the scope to actions developed in other one-off projects or projects that had been inactive for several years (“Ver para Crer” and “RitmoS” projects).
The learning, discussion and experimentation of this confluence of practices began fruitfully in the laboratories and training sessions given by the teams from previous projects, and proved fruitful in the subsequent workshops and classes taught by Metropolitana’s teaching staff. It culminated successfully, as an integrated performance model, in the Final Concert.
These teachers, many of them at the start of their careers, benefited from specialized training and had the opportunity to teach blind and deaf students, thus understanding and familiarizing themselves with the demands of teaching and living with these communities, as well as assimilating and applying a set of methodologies that have proved fruitful for teaching music to them. In addition to the 17 Metropolitana teachers and graduate students, 20 other interested parties took part in the project, which reinforces the contribution of this Metropolitana initiative to the dissemination and application of guidelines and methodologies for teaching people with blindness, low vision and deafness in other arts education institutions.
In the second phase of the project’s implementation, musical practice was guaranteed in choir and percussion classes. The purchase of instruments, the clear availability of several of the teachers who attended the initial training and a careful use of funds made it possible to guarantee blind and deaf participants the complement of learning an instrument – this activity was not specified in the application, but it was successfully carried out and noted with particular satisfaction by the partner organisations.
Faced with logistical difficulties in getting deaf students to take part in the
project on weekends, Metropolitana approached the three local schools of reference for this community, which hosted the project for the respective 10 weeks. Metropolitana’s additional commitment to ensuring that everyone who was interested in the project could fully enjoy it, made it possible for groups of children, young people and adults in the student community to practice music on a regular basis, as well as recovering, designing and passing on new methodologies for practicing music with deaf students to the teachers of the respective educational establishments.
For the 70 blind and deaf students, attending the MUSICAR project made them realize that they could actually experience teaching and artistic practice. It awakened a sense of equal opportunities that is being strengthened because it is not just another project carried out by a specialized organisation, but a different one, started by a renowned arts education establishment that is opening up its training offer to everyone. These participants’ attachment to the project was obvious in their frequent attendance, as well as their commitment to preparing and performing the Final Concert.
The regular practice of instruments and ensembles in the classes of the
second phase of the project also boosted their cognitive, affective and motor development and increased social skills: for the blind and deaf, musical practice reinforced their self-subject, instilled in them a sense of overcoming and concentration and increased their autonomy in artistic practice. Specifically, the musical practice carried out at Metropolitana has brought benefits to participants with comorbidities, favouring cognitive stimulation in deaf adult students and in blind people with Allström syndrome (progressive hearing loss). In this regard, without any pretense of fulfilling therapeutic prescriptions, Metropolitana respond to these specific cases of students with comorbidities, seeking to incorporate advice provided by the students and by competent medical technicians.
The Final Concert, which was the corollary of a pedagogical and artistic action model of great technical and logistical complexity, articulated with the contribution of dedicated associations and entities, made it possible to mediatise the importance of combating discrimination against differences, particularly with regard to access to culture and arts education. The stage is, par excellence, a place of representation that favours the presence of everyone and the fight against exclusionary factors.
The Final Concert, held the week before the celebration of the European Day for People with Disabilities and in one of Lisbon’s prestigious concert halls, featured the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, its Artistic Director, conductor Pedro Neves, blind conductor Adrian Rincón, blind pianist Jorge Gonçalves, a participatory choir of 32 singers, 10 of wich blind, and a percussion ensemble made up of 45 deaf students.
On 29th November, 528 people attended the São Luiz Municipal Theatre for the Final Concert, thus praising the artistic merit of blind and deaf people, to reshape the feeling of complacency and to awaken admiration for this community, in short, to naturalize people with disabilities.
The world premiere of a work for orchestra, choir and percussion, expressly created for the MUSICAR concert, made it possible for blind and deaf musicians mixed with musicians who see and hear to perform together. In this sense, the importance of the good practices and recommendations learnt in the training sessions was emphasized, as was the important result of working with experienced professionals in this area. They also emphasized the usefulness of the methodology developed for percussion practice, which made it possible to coordinate the joint interpretation of students from various school groups.
The skills acquired by the musicians and the Metropolitana’s production and communication teams in welcoming these communities not only at concerts, but also on stage, was also proven. In an effort to ensure full access to the arts for the participating communities, the Metropolitana also aimed to make all of the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa’s concerts inclusive, printing a summary of the concert brochures in Braille, publicizing its programme to vocational partner organisations and guaranteeing entry by invitation to blind and deaf people to the institution’s commemorative concerts.