The 3rd LTT was held in Portugal

from 4th to 8th January 2019

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The two Portuguese partners, Maximinos school and the Conservatory, collaborated efficiently in organizing and arranging all the aspects of the meeting. 
Music was a constant during all the activities of the meeting among all participants regardless of the origin and age of each one. Indeed the 3 workshops, the Hymn rehearsal, the concerts and the dance lesson were all based on how music can help to express ourselves and develop different skills.
“Sing with movement” workshop held by a Portuguese music teacher for students and staff, let discover how with the use of voice and all parts of our body we could produce sounds, melodies, and most of all express emotions. Students appreciated this activity so much because it was done all together and with any distinction of age and nationality and most of all they were surprised on how many possibilities we have to produce music using only body and voice.
“Composing music in an innovative way” workshop was organized in order to show how music can be produced by everyday objects and very simple materials. For example, students used funnels, plastic caps, plastic basins, pots, metal spoons, saucepans etc to reproduce the sounds of French horns, percussions, flutes and so convey the idea of wind, sea, waves. Those sounds were used as background music for a poem on immigrants, so at the end of the workshop a moving performance was set up, and pupils were deeply impressed by the magic of that execution.
“How to build modified instruments” workshop was presented by Accordi abili association to show how many possibilities there are to help disabled persons to play an instrument. Using the experience of mechanics, engineers, informatics competences, they can give handicapped individuals the chance to play a modified instrument adapted to his potentialities, and in this way his self-esteem is increased and music has no more barriers for anyone and becomes the most inclusive universal language.
Students were involved in the first common rehearsal of the Project Hymn, in the Conservatory auditorium, conducted by the Italian music teachers. Each partner sang his own stanza in their language and together the whole group performed the refrain in English. Students and teachers with musical skills played instruments. For the first time we experienced one of the most important goals of the project, that is to find unity in diversity: we felt a unique entity, in spite of our different origins, age, culture and skills.
A special workshop for students was the “Dance lesson”: a dance teacher invited students to repeat steps and rhythms of popular and modern Portuguese dances; students were all involved and enjoyed the pleasure to stay together and to learn new choreography. Each of them felt protagonist of the activity, according to his own ability.
Considering that one of the partners was a Conservatory, they offered to the group the possibility to attend some music concerts of high level, played by normal and blind students with the help of scores in Braille.