The project began with an action to publicise its structure and objectives to the community, with the aim of gathering inputs.
The first workshop took place in person at Metropolitana’s facilities on 24th February and was attended by 10 entities from outside Metropolitana, gathering 35 people in attendance. It was an opportunity to clarify and discuss the precise outlines of the project, listen to testimonies that summarised the current musical training offer for the blind and deaf communities in Portugal, identify methodologies and experiences that have already been tried out and point out good practices that could be implemented. The main lines of intervention were defined from the outset, in particular the need to initially separate training for the blind and training for the deaf, due to the specific characteristics of each area.
Immediately afterwards, two training sessions were held for around two dozen of Metropolitana’s administrative staff and educational assistants, in order to ensure that the entire structure of the organization would be able to receive and work with blind and deaf people. The first session, entitled “People with blindness and low vision: Seeing with different eyes!” took place on 31st March and was led by Dídia Lourenço, a special education teacher and president of the Associação Bengala Mágica. The second session, entitled “The Deaf Person and Sign Language: Myths and Realities”, took place on 14th April and was led by Patrícia Carmo, choir member of the Mãos que Cantam project and Master in Portuguese Sign Language and Deaf Children’s Education from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
This was followed by 10 training sessions aimed at teachers, students on higher education music courses, professional musicians, educational assistants, production and communication technicians and other interested parties from other institutions. Taking place weekly, always on Friday evenings between March 2nd and May 12th, the content of these sessions covered topics such as Braille Musicography, memorisation methodologies and auditory training for the blind, the basics of Portuguese sign language, guidelines for teaching choirs and string and wind instruments to people who are blind or have low vision, and teaching percussion instruments to people who are deaf or have reduced hearing.
All these sessions were officially recognized and certified by the Pró-Inclusão Training Centre – National Association of Special Education Teachers. In total, 146 certificates were issued.
The first two courses were entitled “Introduction to Braille Musicography” and were led by the co-coordinator of the MUSICAR project, Rui Magno Pinto, who is also responsible for the artistic area of the Filarmónica Enarmonia project. Braille musicography is an essential mediation tool in the teaching-learning process of music theory for blind, partially sighted and low vision students. Knowledge of its fundamentals, even if rudimentary, can provide this community with musical training that goes beyond auditory memorisation, using symbolic representation to grasp the musical phenomenon conceptually. These sessions introduced the topic, discuss solutions, evaluated constraints and, above all, opened up perspectives for music teachers to acquire new pedagogical skills and envisage future projects in this area.
The next two sessions were dedicated to themes related to teaching music to deaf students. Always in the presence of a sign language interpreter, both sessions were led by the conductor and choir members of the Mãos que Cantam project. They reflected on the presence of music in the universe of the deaf, identifying the opportunity to apprehend musical concepts and how they influenced the structural development of sign language.
It was shown that it is possible to express musical ideas in Portuguese Sign Language, such as the notion of intensity, polyphony, metrics and the formal structure of a piece of music, as well as interpreting the lyrics, recreating a piece of music.
There were also three sessions dedicated to teaching musical instruments to blind or low-vision students, with teachers from the Filarmónica Enarmonia project as trainers. Teaching instruments to these students raises a number of pedagogical challenges. The aim was to recommend good practices for teaching and practising music with people who are visually impaired. Methods and guidelines for teaching the different instruments, applications and programmes that allow for the preparation
of other teaching materials, necessary or recommended morphological adaptations of instruments and other facilitating technological equipment were also presented. Each of the sessions was dedicated, respectively, to (1) woodwind and brass, (2) guitars, keys and percussion and (3) strings and ensemble practice.
The remaining 2 sessions, dedicated to Music Teaching and Music Practice for Deaf Students, were led by teachers Filipa Teixeira Lopes and Susana Salgueiro and teacher Paulo Cunha. The RitmoS project implemented at Casa Pia de Lisboa’s Jacob Rodrigues Pereira Education and Development Centre between 2003 and 2021 was presented, which aimed to develop deaf students’ skills of attention, observation, memorisation, identification and understanding of aspects related to the musical phenomenon through participation in a drum ensemble.
Rhythmic skills were worked on, always in groups, through body movement, instrumental practice and language games. This idea would inspire the solution found for making ensemble music with the students in the last phase of the MUSICAR project. The last session covered topics such as the adaptation of music curriculum content according to the specificity/degree of hearing impairment, the relationship between hearing people and music in deafness, the relationship between deaf people and music, the importance of touch and sight in the relationship between deaf people and music, the importance of orality in the production and interpretation of music by deaf people and the importance of movement and gestures in the production and interpretation of music by deaf people.
After this stage, two more workshops were held on 16th and 26th May, this time by videoconference, to summarise the subjects covered in the 10 MUSICAR Training Courses. The goal was to define teaching resources to be applied and trialled in the next phases. A total of 60 people took part in these workshops. The first exploratory meetings took place in the “Vem MUSICAR connosco“ workshops, aimed at deaf students (17th and 24th June) and blind or low-vision students aged over 6 (17th June and 1st July).
These workshops served as an introduction to the MUSICAR classes that took place later, from September to November. Always free of charge, they took place at Metropolitana’s facilities and offered a first approach to musical training.
Firstly, some musical instruments were presented by Metropolitana teachers under the supervision of professionals with experience in teaching music to these communities. Then there was ensemble music practice – in a choir, with blind students, and in a drum ensemble, with deaf students. The experience and information gathered during these workshops enabled the MUSICAR classes to be designed in the best possible way. Ten teachers from Metropolitana schools took part in these events. There were 27 applications in all four workshops.
The 10 weeks of MUSICAR classes ran from 23rd September to 25th November. There were individual lessons in violin, piano, bassoon, flute, percussion, trumpet and cello, according to the preferences of the students.
Several of these students tried their hand at learning two instruments at the same time. The blind students were joined by students with vision who attended Music Theory and Braille musicography classes, as well as choir classes. These classes provided both students and teachers with healthy learning moments, but above all an understanding of the implications of regular music teaching. The loan of instruments was a successful solution, in that it offered the students the chance to familiarise themselves with the instrument by studying at home in accordance with the usual routine of attending a conservatoire.
It turned out that the number of deaf people taking part in Saturday music classes was low. Although very successful, only two deaf students were willing to learn percussion and a second instrument, namely piano and cello. The small number meant that it wasn’t possible to form an ensemble class with drums or a sign language choir. So an alternative was sought. The three schools with the largest number of deaf pupils in Lisbon were contacted and were offered weekly percussion classes for deaf pupils. The schools’ administrations, teachers, students and families were enthusiastic in their support.
Between September and the date of the Final Concert, 25 instrumental ensemble practice sessions (bass drums) were held with deaf students in the three schools, which thus becaming partners in the MUSICAR project. The possibility of forming a sign language choir with these students was also trialled, but to no avail, due to the students’ rudimentary mastery of Portuguese Sign Language – a significant number were children or adults with various comorbidities.
The concert that culminated the project took place on 29th November and had three purposes. The first was to celebrate the meeting of the project’s participants: students, teachers, personalities and organisations that had supported and closely followed the initiative. The second was to publicise 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 inscription of everyone’s presence and the confrontation of exclusionary factors. The third was to “MUSICKING” together – to practise music together – regardless of the quality of each person’s participation; be it playing an instrument, singing, listening or contributing to making it happen.
Most of the programme included Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Mozart’s Symphony N.º 29. The orchestra was then joined by the choir from the Mãos que Cantam project and the MUSICAR’s Participatory Choir. We then heard the famous “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from the third act of Verdi’s opera Nabucco. This is a hymn of lament, resistance and hope that resonates sympathetically with the orientation of this project.
Finally, 48 students from the Parque Silva Porto, Quinta de Marrocos and Jacob Rodrigues Pereira schools joined in with the music. This was the premiere of Lino Guerreiro’s composition expressly composed for this moment, reminding us that there are many ways to feel and understand the world, and that art is a privileged mean of doing so.