In Portugal, music as a tool to draw the attention of young people to sustainability.
Integrated into the EDP Foundation’s Education with Energy area, the Music with Energy project, launched in 2022, using music as a tool to draw the attention of the youngest to sustainability.
Music for Thought
In July 2022, EDP Foundation launched the inclusive pilot project Music with Energy, whose mission was to promote young people’s awareness of sustainability issues, using music.
This is a project within the EDP Foundation’s Education with Energy area, in partnership with the Skoola Urban Music Academy, and is also a tool for intervention through art for sustainability.
The project aims to invite young people aged 10 to 18 to reflect on the climate emergency and create art objects that can challenge others to do the same. It is a process of community creation, offering a week of creation, reflection and awareness on these themes, based on 3 vertexes:
- exploration of the sound possibilities of various materials, such as marine debris, waste, reused materials (e.g. the invention of new instruments) and graphic and/or sculptural compositions of the same;
- film viewing, conversations with experts, and moments of reflection;
- the word - spoken, written, sung or manipulated, as sound material offers an infinity of meanings.
The workshops run during school vacations and involve 35 young people in each edition - 25 of whom are scholarship recipients from Skoola’s partner institutions.
The program includes the participation of several guests, with extensive experience in the field of activism in the area of climate emergency, and using non-formal teaching methodologies.
Each edition ends with a presentation of the show created during the week by the young people at Central Tejo.
1st Edition
In 2022, the program featured guests with recognized experience in the field of climate activism, who drew on multidisciplinary alternative teaching methodologies. They are:
- Ana Pêgo, biologist activist and artist;
- Maze, musician and environmental activist;
- Nuno Cintrão, musician and teacher;
- Abel Arez, musician and specialist in collective and multidisciplinary artistic creation.
Music with Energy ended on July 22, with a show open to the public conceived by the participants, which took place at Central Tejo.