Having completed the MUSICAR pilot project, Metropolitana has emerged as a promoter of social artistic initiatives for music and disability. The project has resulted in the creation of a network made up of artistic institutions, organisations dedicated to visual impairment and deafness, made up of musicians, music teachers, special education teachers, psychologists, linguists, Portuguese Sign Language interpreters and production teams that will enable similar projects to be implemented more easily, when necessary, and possibly replicated in other places.
The Núcleo de Ensino MUSICAR was set up at Metropolitana, an informal
group of professionals dedicated to specific reflection on teaching and learning methodologies for blind, low vision and deaf students, with a view to the future implementation of this teaching modality as part of the Conservatório de Música da Metropolitana’s regular activities. This group brings together teachers from the three Metropolitana schools that took part in the MUSICAR project, who attended the respective training sessions and workshops in the first phase of the project and who taught instrument lessons to the project participants in the second phase, including musicians who were part of the orchestra at the Final Concert. At the end of the project, the forum is now working on drawing up a guide of pedagogical procedures and good practices to be implemented in Metropolitana schools.
Metropolitana facilitated the attendance of its teachers and students, as well as other interested parties (music teachers and those trained in special education), thus making it possible to learn the methodologies developed in previous projects. On the other hand, it made it possible for several professional and amateur musicians to participate in the workshops and ensembles that took part in the concert, enabling a transversal learning of the methodologies learnt and others created in the course of the project for various interested parties who will be able to replicate and develop them in their own institutions.
The project has thus provided complementary training for all those who attended, suggesting a specialisation in teaching people with disabilities – which therefore goes beyond the job market available to teachers of music theory, instruments and ensemble practice.
One of the main obstacles to the dissemination of music teaching for the blind and deaf is also the lack of familiarity between cultural institutions and organisations geared towards these communities, reference schools and families (which is, in fact, due to the absence of an artistic training offer for these communities).
So it was this new step taken by Metropolitana – which was associated with previous projects – that consolidated a new perspective on music teaching in Portugal, not only in artistic projects for social inclusion (promoted by organisations or formal and informal groups of blind and deaf people), but also in leading institutions of artistic education.
On the other hand, the unprecedented prominence given to the MUSICAR initiative by the media was also important, bringing the subject up for debate in society. The project has helped to awaken everyone’s commitment so that the barriers to music education for blind, low vision and deaf people can be broken down in the near future and these communities can be guaranteed fruitful learning. The project has followed the EU’s premises for full access to education and the arts for these communities and for combating social inequalities. However, if access to music education is to be full, these initiatives need to spread nationally and internationally.
It is also necessary for these social inclusion measures to be promoted over longer periods of time and in multiple actions. To this end, the necessary human and financial resources must be guaranteed. In the case of a public school, such as the Conservatório de Música da Metropolitana, the solution could be to raise sponsorship for scholarships. In addition to the stigmas associated with blindness and deafness, which lead these communities to exclude themselves from this type of training, the socio-economic difficulties they face partly explain why it’s difficult for parents to guarantee enrolment and attendance at a music school with a weekly attendance, sometimes wider. The conditions need to be met to minimise the logistical cost borne by families. In turn, the displacement of teachers to regular schools entails logistical costs that need to be taken into account.
At Metropolitana we believe that culture, art and music serve all individuals in a beneficial and fruitful way, giving them different ways of feeling and understanding the world, and that this is the perception that unites us. This is why we are striving to achieve a new paradigm in arts education, one in which all those who wish to dedicate themselves to learning music can do so in any conservatoire; we are insisting on training teaching and non-teaching staff for this purpose.
Having completed the project, we now realize that it is also necessary to sensitize these communities so that they seek out music and believe that art is accessible to them. Families in particular need to be made aware of the importance of learning music formally: the small number of blind children (only 3), as well as the low enrolment of deaf people in the classes offered on Saturdays at Metropolitana’s facilities, suggests this.
At the end of the project, Metropolitana aims to start providing art education to the blind and deaf community as soon as the logistical and financial conditions are met. To this end, efforts are being made to ensure that blind and deaf students who wish to join the Metropolitana can do so on the same terms, with the same curricula and at the same times as the others: learning and perfecting music is not exclusive to those seeking a career or to others who do so for the happiness that art brings them; nor should inclusive artistic projects be distinguished from the Metropolitana’s regular activities.