WHAT IS THE SCHOOL? WHAT IS IT FOR?

Reinventing school, education, and learning is an urgency of our times.

Thinking about the school, its direction, its past and future, childhood, youth, the dream, the teacher, the guardian, the canteen, the student, the weather, the backpack, the uniform, the shoe, the mask, the tests, and, simultaneously, the transformations of the world, of freedom, of movement, work and, with all these aspects in mind, imagine another school is a critical, ethical, creative and perhaps Utopian exercise.

Transforming it in a specific educational community is a political exercise. This program, as a whole, invites reflection about the child, the man and the planet from works of contemporary art.

 Thinking about school is also thinking about children, but it is, above all, taking care of them.

The program is an initiative of the Parents Association of the Portuguese School of Macau, which started in 2020 and aimed at integrating the Portuguese School of Macau into a program conducted by Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, titled "Micro-democracy - What can we do?", in a partnership that also involved BABEL Cultural Organization, Casa de Portugal in Macau, Orient Foundation and the Portuguese School of Macau.

Following the pandemic, which shocked the world globally, the project has a new outlook.

We present two Master Classes: Art and Education, conducted by Professor Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio, and Education and Heritage, by Professor Guilherme d'Oliveira Martins.

Simultaneously a series of workshops around critical questions for the contemporary world will take place: How can you wear a mask? Will there be something special about the body of the woman? What does it mean to be "cool"? What will we feed? Will there be anyone above the Law? Alphabet or tebahpla? , among others.

This proposal expands children's opportunities to engage with the world of artists, their practices, their processes, and issues that are present and, above all, urgent.

We hope, in this way, to generate learning opportunities that place young people and their educators at the center of a triangulation: observe, criticize and create.

Today it is possible to learn everything you want without geographical limits or time constraints while staying home. Soon we will have to explain to our youth: What is school? And what is it for?

Margarida Saraiva