Where are we? Performing the city, slowing down time.
Susana Mendes-Silva, Beatriz Cantinho, University of Évora, Portugal
Breakout Session 1: Wednesday 10 May 16:30 – 18:30

This workshop is about how you can create connections with the place where you are, how you can look and unveil lost, forgotten, or erased stories through the eyes of the common passer-by. Our territory is the city and we want participants to experience its landscape and soundscape, and their own bodies, from a situated perspective. That perspective will derive from a script and instructions that we provide the group with, guiding them through this journey. We are also informed by the legacy of the situationist drift (Debord, 1981) and the way in which it can constitute a legacy for the elaboration of a choreographic thought. Drawing from choreography, performance, and visual arts, Mendes-Silva and Cantinho explore ways in which one relates the movement of the bodies and their sensorial experience in a poetic and affective relationship with the visible and invisible spaces of Évora.

Situated in Baltimore: The art school as a partner with/in thriving cultural communities
Stacey Salazar, Maryland Institute College of Art, United States
Breakout Session 2: Thursday 11 May 09:30 – 11:30

In this presentation, Salazar will share ways in which MICA is working, as the school’s mission states, to ‘thrive with Baltimore’, a majority-Black city. As the senior administrator responsible for all of the school’s residential graduate degree programmes, her talk will focus on the graduate level. The presentation will transition into a provocation for participants to consider the implications for art schools working as partners with/in communities in the 21st century, such as: reflection and action at the individual and institutional level; iterative, participatory models for dismantling white supremacist structures with/in the college’s workgroups and departments — because you cannot do the work outside the institution if you are not doing it inside; and cultural humility — engaging off-campus partners with a ‘humble hand’.

PLAY/ACT: A cross-disciplinary project that engages students with local communities and places
Pedro Retzke, Leonor Almeida, University of Évora, Portugal
Breakout Session 2: Thursday 11 May 09:30 – 11:30

This session reflects on the positive aspects and difficulties in implementing transdisciplinary, community-based projects in training contexts.
‘PLAY/ACT – Placemaking as Youth Activism’ is an Erasmus+ project coordinated by the University of Évora, with partners in Spain, Italy, and Hungary. The objective of the project is to train university students to develop placemaking projects. This is to encourage transformation of public spaces through co-design practices with communities, with the aim of making those spaces more participatory, happy, and sustainable. As part of the project, an international lifelong training course was created with the participation of the Universities of Évora (PT), Extremadura (ES), and Basilicata (IT). Participants are invited to share examples of other transdisciplinary, community-based projects or pedagogical practices that promote relations between academia and the physical, social, and cultural contexts where they operate.

Unveiling the invisible: A music workshop for the blind and visually impaired
Bertrand Chavarria-Aldrete, Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, Sweden
Breakout Session 2: Thursday 11 May 09:30 – 11:30

A workshop on the research ‘Plastic Extension of Music’. This workshop aims to create a new catalogue of sounds in different outputs and associations with the help and collaboration of participants from the visually impaired and blind community in Sweden. With the information gathered, Chavarria-Aldrete has conceived a workshop/test to create a new catalogue of the shapes, textures, resiliency, form, weight, scent, taste, verbal association, and elasticity of the musical elements that construct a musical discourse. Associated with the tests and as a completion of the new catalogue of sounds, a series of clay expression workshops will be held to create a new iconographic history of sound, unveiling its form through the hands of the visually impaired in a complete and new dimension of the absent physical form of sound.
During the session the film Unveiling the invisible / 2022 / 17:01, by Bertrand Chavarría-Aldrete & Gonçalo Duarte will be screended. How does sound look like ? Ana and Carla, both visually impaired, tell us how they “see” and feel sound. This short documentary is a fragment of how sound seems to unveil its mysterious form through the hands and “visions” of the visually impaired. Gonçalo Duarte, c0-director of the film will be present

Wearing Practice: An investigation of the relationship and impact of dress within Higher Arts Education
Lesley Raven, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Breakout Session 2: Thursday 11 May 09:30 – 11:30

Photography* and collage will be used in the workshop to stimulate debate around visual communication and dress code. Our garments and conference attire will be considered to investigate linkages between academic identity and the materiality of everyday dress framed by our creative practice and persona. Wearing Practice is a development of a previous research project: Drawing Practice, a methodology to promote reflective practice and collaboration’ (IASDR, 2019; Raven, Carr & Shearston, 2019). Drawing, as a common skill within art and design, was used to aid the depiction of tacit thoughts (Rodgers, 2008). Similarly, collage and image-making will be explored to support the articulation of our thoughts and ideas. 
*There will be opportunity for delegates to have their outfits photographed on Day 1. 

PLASTIC REPLAY
Leonel Alegre, Marius Araújo, University of Évora, Portugal
Breakout Session 3: Thursday 11 May 12:00 – 13:00

REPLAY aims to reduce waste associated with toys by promoting community-driven circular networks to collect toys and recycle their materials. To complete the loop, an eco-design competition invited university students to design a toy made from recycled plastic, demonstrating how a toy can be sustainably engaging through its lifecycle. The project engaged local schools and local entities, providing crucial tools for environmental education and proactive civic engagement. The University of Évora, together with the Municipality of Évora and local stakeholders, set up a collecting and sorting network for end-of-life toys and tested a recycling circuit relying on the university’s Precious Plastic equipment. Developed with five primary school classes, students had the opportunity to meet the OIO designers and get familiar with the design and production processes.