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Margens e Travessias, Belmira Gumbe

MA Art Education Student at Escola Superior de Educação of Viana do Castelo Polytechnic, northern Portugal - Belmira Gumbe interviewed by Adriano Mixinge, Program "Margens e Travessias", Angola - 12/22/2024

Video translation by Beatriz Mendes

E-Service Learning for Boosting Academic Civic Engagement in Rural Areas Project, CIVENHANCE

The project E-Service Learning for Boosting Academic Civic Engagement in Rural Areas (CIVENHANCE) is developed in a collaboration between Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici from Slovakia (the coordinator), La Salle Campus Barcelona - Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain), University of Zagreb (Croatia), Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta di Roma (Italy), University of Balearic Islands (Spain), and Pädagogische Hochschule Wien (Austria), funded by the European Union under grant 2024-1-SK01-KA220-HED-000245367.

The project’s objectives are: enhancing higher education teachers' capacity for rural e-service-learning (e-SL) while fostering civic engagement in students; promoting e-SL in rural communities to empower students for meaningful engagement; facilitating collaboration between universities, teachers, and rural partners through digitalization and ensuring sustainability of e-SL results for social inclusion, civic engagement, and prosperity.

The motivation for this project stems from the collective experiences in previous endeavors focused on service learning. Through initiatives like the Erasmus+ projects Rural 3.0 (Service Learning for the Rural Development) and e-SL4EU (e-Service Learning for more digital and inclusive EU Higher Education systems), the hurdles hindering the full implementation of service learning (SL) in higher education environments were encountered. In Rural 3.0, the project collaborators witnessed SL's potential to address rural needs and foster sustainable solutions via partnerships with urban universities. However, significant obstacles such as poor accessibility to rural areas, time constraints, and travel costs impede effective collaboration. Despite these challenges, rural SL projects boast a profound impact, emphasizing human connections and streamlined processes free from bureaucratic constraints.

Conversely, the results of the e-SL4EU project revealed the viability of e-SL in addressing social needs during disruptive events, such as the pandemic. E-SL offers flexibility in implementation, accommodating hybrid or fully online formats tailored to diverse contexts and student skill levels. Drawing from these experiences, CIVENHANCE aims at leveraging e-SL to overcome obstacles in rural SL initiatives and unlock SL's potential in geographically disadvantaged communities.

The project entails developing a training course for higher education (HE) teachers to assist students in executing e-SL projects with rural communities. Additionally, project partners will design a tailored orientation course for HE students to enhance their civic engagement through e-SL experiences. Lastly, a matchmaking platform will be created to facilitate connections between teachers, students, and rural community partners.

The project aims to train HE lecturers in e-SL methodologies, so as to implement this methodology with their students, equipping them with advanced technological skills, place-based leadership and entrepreneurial competencies (following the EntreComp framework). Collaborating with local rural entrepreneurs and action groups, students will co-create innovative solutions to community needs, bolstering rural development initiatives. Furthermore, a dedicated course focused on civic engagement, will enhance the impact of the e-SL project undertaken by students while addressing a crucial gap in the offerings of partners. The absence of such an elective course in partner HEIs make this orientation keenly felt, particularly given its high demand in meeting the shared objectives of sustainability and inclusivity among all partners.

Finally, CIVENHANCE project seeks to develop a novel methodology combining SL and e-learning, integrating microlearning, nanolearning, and gamification techniques to deliver learning experiences. By coaching teachers in learning experience design for academic purposes, the project aspires to enhance pedagogical practices and contribute valuable research insights that may inform public policy.

The three courses that will be developed as part of the project condense what is described above: 1) a course for teachers on how to organize, implement and assess rural e-SL project; 2) the orientation course for HE students on civic engagement (CE) and 3) the course for HE teachers on how to replicate CE course for HE students.

The project's holistic approach to promoting e-SL, enhancement of Universities' innovativeness, dedication to Third Mission and Societal Responsibility through civic engagement in rural areas and empowering educators and students exemplify its innovative and forward-thinking nature. The project paves the way for transformative change across EU by addressing key challenges and leveraging cutting-edge solutions.

Nives Mikelić Preradović is a full professor with tenure at the Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She obtained her PhD in 2008 at the University of Zagreb. She is the Head of the Chair for the Knowledge Organization at the Department of Information Sciences.

She was the first to introduce service-learning in Croatia in 2006 and has mentored and administered over 100 projects with the local community since then. She was the national contact person of the following Erasmus+ projects: SLIDE: Service-Learning as a pedagogy to promote Inclusion, diversity and Digital Empowerment (2022-2024), eSL4EU: e-Service Learning for more digital and inclusive EU Higher Education systems (2021-2024), Rural 3.0: Service Learning for the Rural Development (2019-2021) and Europe Engage - Developing a Culture of Civic Engagement through Service-Learning within Higher Education in Europe (2015-2017). She is also a member of the board of directors of EASLHE (European Association of Service Learning in Higher Education).

Her general research interests include service-learning, inclusive design, learning expeience design, natural language processing and computer-assisted language learning. She published 2 books, 24 book chapters and 70+ research papers in international journals and conference proceedings.

Silvestre Pestana

Artistic education is an educational and universal bridge, widely recognized as important and necessary to balance the intense forces exerted by its continuous format throughout the lives of citizens.In this context, artistic education favors and promotes, together and through educational institutions, various technical skills, in addition to the intense appreciation of innate faculties, identified as fantasy and imagination.Thus, as an artist and educator, I value the contribution provided by ethnographic research, that we can find and recognize a constant in the analyzed societies of a continuous appetite for artistic activities and products, material or immaterial throughout their entire social activity.

Throughout this year of 2024, I participated by invitation, as an artist, in two activities led by the artist curator André Sousa, who lives with his family in Frankfurt and is co-responsible for the project “Uma Certa Nunca de Coerência”, a gallery run by artists located in the city of Porto.

I was interviewed, via video conference, by a group of 4th year students, who study Portuguese (Mother Language) at the Frankfurt European School. The interview focused on my artistic and poetic activity developed since 1969. They asked me questions regarding my artistic experience and asked for clarification on how I reacted, as a deserter exiled in Sweden, to the military uprising and subsequent Revolution on April 24, 1974.

This was the theme of my recent exhibition called TANKAR I LISSABON, in honor of the Carnation Revolution. In this one, I presented an expanded poem with luminous writing that describes how we, the Portuguese defectors in Stockholm, reacted to the first news of the military uprising in Lisbon. The question common to everyone, and considered the most important, was undoubtedly “IS THE WAR OVER?” — what consequences the revolution would have on the colonial war and impact it would have on our condition.
The school newspaper “O Jornal dos Pês” published my interview in its first edition ESF 2023/24, released on June 10, 2024.
This edition of the school newspaper “O Jornal dos Pês” paid special attention to the theme of the celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of April 1974-2024. The newspaper was structured around the idea of freedom and the content developed by the children was based on their experience with Portugal, a country in which they do not live.
Developed between April and June 2024, together with a plastic arts workshop and a performing arts workshop.
The launch of the Newspaper was accompanied by a performative situation in which children simulated meetings in which they developed conversations, rehearsed or improvised, based on the texts they had developed for the newspaper.
Teacher Adélia da Silva had the collaboration of two parents of students André Sousa and Ioli Georgila, with degrees in Fine Arts and Theater, respectively.
Furthermore, during summer 2024, the 1st edition of the Festa da Arte em Rede na Região do Alentejo (FARRA) took place in the city of Elvas. Opened at the end of June and lasting two months, this edition featured immense exhibition projects spread across the city, intense presentations of collections from public and private collections, open sections of dialogue and conversation related to the visual arts.
Once again, at the invitation of the Uma Lack of Coerence project, I was part of the collective exhibition Escola do Amor which occupied one of the classrooms at the Alcáçova 1st Cycle School (in Elvas) throughout the school holidays.
The collective exhibition ESCOLA DO AMOR@FARRA presented in a classroom, several works by two couples of artists: the Americans Dan Graham and Mieko Meguro, and the Portuguese Celeste Cerqueira and Silvestre Pestana.
Taking advantage of the room space, the Uma Certa Lack of Coerence project wanted to evoke the learning that takes place between artists, without them having to choose between the role of teacher or student. Learning Art and Love placed side by side.
In this exhibition it was important not to deface the classroom. Any student or teacher at the school, upon entering there, would recognize the space as theirs and know where to sit. The works and artists were present there, integrating the space, questioning it but without transforming it.
In finishing, I reinforce my opinion (based on long experience as an educator and artist) that it is very pertinent and very important that visiting artists become more and more popular in Arts classes at all levels of education.

QDA Dance Festival: A Space for Creation, Training and Artistic Development, Ana Macara

The Quinzena de Dança de Almada (QDA) Dance Festival, for the past 32 years, has strived to contribute to the artistic and cultural development of the community. In 2024, once again, several performances were presented in the city of Almada, by Portuguese and international authors, representing much of what is being done today in contemporary dance. In addition to the many live performances, and also screen dances, this festival created spaces that can strengthen the relationship between artists, students and the community, and contribute to the development of a whole body of knowledge and skills for creation and artistic appreciation.

Last September, during the International Platform for Choreographers, attended by around fifty artists representing more than twenty choreographers, an “International Meeting of Dance Directors, Programmers and Producers” was organized, bringing together a large number of professionals, not only from Portugal, but also from other countries such as Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia, Lituania, Luxembourg, Germany, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Poland and Macao. In the various and intense sessions that took place in the multifunctional Salão das Carochas, there was the opportunity to get to know the institutions represented and the different formats and ways of organising them, and also to contribute to establishing exchanges and developing multilateral relations.
Important issues relating to the production and programming of dance by the different institutions were also presented and discussed at a round table, and there was heated debate about the future of contemporary dance and the role of festivals in this process. During this meeting there was also the opportunity to present Companhia de Dança de Almada in an open rehearsal with the presence of choreographer São Castro, who spoke about her creative process and talked with the guest programmers who were able to attend.

There were also many meetings and informal get-togethers between artists and programme-makers, where many affinities grew and prospects for future fruitful exchanges were born.
The training of students and creators is given great attention in QDA. Hence the workshops and residencies dedicated to dance students and professionals interested in developing their skills. Catarina Casqueiro & Tiago Coelho, who have formed a contemporary dance creation duo since 2018 and have circulated their work nationally and internationally with great success, were invited to lead a workshop on contemporary technique. The participants, all dance students, were able to develop new skills and ways of using the body, contributing to their technical and creative availability.
The same choreographers also developed a residency during the festival in which they not only had the opportunity to improve their choreographic duet ‘Forget Me Not’, but also developed a new extended version under the same theme with advanced students from the Ca.DA school. The two versions of this piece, presented at the end of the festival, ended with an absorbing conversation with the audience, who warmly welcomed and praised the work and the great involvement of the students/dancers. This was a highly enriching experience, not only for the audience, but above all for these trainees, who had the chance to work with professionals, with a high level of technical and interpretative demands and with the high pressure created by the commitment to present to the public with a quite short rehearsal time.
Also invited was Italian Roberta Maimone, who has developed her own movement method with the aim of exploring comic book characters, offering practical sessions that provide structural guidance to the body. According to this author, ‘MEM symbolises fluidity, like water in constant movement and transformation. Its aim is to reach a climax in body and mind through an introspective journey, encouraging body awareness and maintaining a consistent energetic vibration within.’ And so, through interesting role-playing exercises, the participants were able to deepen their own characters, exploring a distinctive choreographic approach influenced by the culture of mime.
Among the various initiatives dedicated to establishing links with the community, a workshop open to anyone interested was also organised, entitled B>Lab, and led by Sebastián Garcia Ferro, an Argentinian teacher, choreographer, performer and musician based in Barcelona. B>Lab is a working tool that aims to awaken creative ideas, letting them circulate in a process of diversity and inclusion, through a procedure of non-hierarchical cross-exploration. The public who took part in these sessions, of very varied characteristics and occupations, got involved in movement research, found connections and shared their discoveries which fueled a collective creation full of richness and variety.
We hope that all the spectators and participants in this festival have come away enriched and that they will perhaps take a closer look at contemporary dance and art in general. And may new creative ideas, opportunities and work plans emerge for the participating artists following all these encounters!

Ana Macara, MA, PhD, is a retired Professor from FMH - University of Lisbon where she worked in the area of dance studies from 1983 until 2016. Coordinator of the Dance Department from 2002 to 2009 and of the Master in Performing Arts in FMH-UTL from 2008-2014.

Presently, she is a researcher at Instituto de Musicologia - Musica e Dança (INET-MD), and Centre for Performing Arts in FMH – Universidade de Lisboa.

Former dancer and choreographer, she has worked in independent projects as a freelancer. Guest choreographer in Companhia de Dança de Almada she created several dance pieces, and she is artistic co-director of Quinzena de Dança de Almada – International Dance Festival since 1992.