3.1. A Meu Ver and the Teatrão Pedagogical Project

In Portugal, in addition to having obstacles in access to arts and culture, in its strict sense, disabled people also face a lack of opportunities to participate in the professional artistic world (^{Vlachou & Acesso Cultura, 2020}). Based on the new vision of disabled people and their rights emanating from the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (²⁰⁰⁶), we have been witnessing the emergence of a growing number of projects and programmes to support the creation and development of inclusive contexts and opportunities in the world of culture and arts. One example is the PARTIS & Art for Change programme, funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and La Caixa Foundation, which aims to fund artistic projects for social inclusion in Portugal. This programme, created in 2020, supports, through training and funding actions, organisations that develop and implement artistic practices that promote social inclusion. The project A Meu Ver, under analysis in this article, developed by Teatrão, is one of the projects funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and La Caixa Foundation under the PARTIS & Art for Change programme. Running for three years, A Meu Ver (2021-2024)² provides theatre training for a group of people with blindness and low-vision and creates and presents three theatre performances. The project is developed through a partnership between the professional theatre company Teatrão and the Coimbra Delegation of the Associação dos Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal (Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Portugal - ACAPO), aimed at creating a hub of work dedicated to the practice of theatre. Therefore, a regular theatre workshop was designed, the Sala de Ensaios (Rehearsal Room), which, with the support of a professional and multidisciplinary artistic team, is responsible for the development of the project and from which emerged a first play, entitled O Que É Invisível (What is Invisible), premiered in March 2022. This article is based on the monitoring work of the first year of the A Meu Ver implementation, which sought to understand how the theatre practice contributes to the identity construction of people with visual impairment participating in the project.

The A Meu Ver project is especially relevant to Teatrão’s mission, given the exten sive work that this professional theatre company has been developing, particularly since 2010, in implementing mediation projects with the community, which involve an aspect of social inclusion through artistic practices. As the company states, ^Teatrão (2023) takes on

the mission of bringing theatre art closer to the communities and territories, promoting equal access to its activities for all audiences, through inclusive practices, as a result of its political position on the role of art and culture in the development of individuals and communities. (para. 1)

Therefore, the company seeks to be part of the daily life of the communities where it operates and help make art recognised as an essential practice in society. Teatrão offers a wide range of activities, including plays for various types of audiences (offering audio description and translation services for Portuguese sign language), programming shows by other creators, training for all ages and community intervention. Since its creation, Teatrão has worked to make artistic activities more accessible to all, bringing it closer to the communities and the territory. After taking over the spaces of the Oficina Municipal de Teatro (Municipal Theatre Workshop) in 2008, the company has worked to make it a place of proximity, but also investing in a work of circulation of artistic productions in national and international circuits and continuing to invest in the pedagogical and artistic dimension (^{Baltazar, 2021}). Several projects were created to accomplish the company’s objectives, among them the pedagogical and intervention projects, which seek to make access to culture a right of citizens.

The pedagogical project is the link between the different dimensions of the company’s activities, materialising the belief that access to culture is a right built through a regular practice of cultural habits (^{Baltazar, 2021}). The pedagogical project includes six programs: “Links”, “Turmas” (Classes), “Pastas” (Portfolios), “Explorações” (Explorations), “Prós Grandes” (For the Great) and “Prós Stôres” (For the Teachers). The “Links” program is where the public participates directly in the creative process, interacting with the artists through talks, workshops and guided tours. The “Turmas” programme runs throughout the year. It offers continuous training in theatre practices, led by guest artists, educators or residents, offering a training ground for future actors and actresses of the company. The “Pastas” programme includes a compilation of supporting materials produced by the educational service and research conducted in the company’s projects. The “Explorações” programme operates through workshops, routes or guided tours, allowing the public to contemplate and experience other forms of occupation and coexistence in everyday urban life and to combine these experiences with the exploration of the language of theatre and performance. The “Prós Grandes” programme is developed in partnership with local support networks (day care centres and nursing homes) and is a theatre project aimed at the senior population. Finally, the “Pros Stôres” programme is aimed at teachers and educators and offers short and medium-length courses with the possibility of co-production.

The project A Meu Ver is part of the “Turmas” programme from Teatrão’s peda gogical project and follows other training and artistic creation programmes with different types of communities (young people from low-income neighbourhoods - 2010/2011; young children of emigrants - 2011/2012; young people in a situation or risk of dropping out of school - 2012/2013), which the company has been developing over the last decade. The experience shared in this article is set within this mediation element, opening new channels to think about artistic activity regarding its possibilities of mediation between different types of publics, exploring simultaneously the different levels that its formats of cultural participation can adopt. In the particular case of A Meu Ver, the development of this place for creation, training, and artistic expression opens new possibilities for thinking about the social inclusion of communities often made invisible by society at large, rethinking and reformulating the formats of cultural participation. This project involved a group of 11 people with visual impairment, five men and six women, between 32 and 72 years old, living in different civil parishes of the district of Coimbra and with a very heterogeneous level of education (two people with primary education; two people with lower secondary education; four people with secondary education and three people with higher education). This group is also quite heterogeneous regarding life circumstances. Of the 11 participants, six are married or living in a non-marital partnership, three are single, and two are divorced. Regarding employment status: five people retired for disability due to permanent inability to work, four were unemployed and looking for a job, one was employed, and one was doing social work required under the “Contrato Emprego - Inserção+” measure.

4.1. Methodology

This research privileged a qualitative approach, conducting a case study, exploratory in nature, between October 2021 and August 2022. The data reported here were collected through four data collection techniques: participant observation, questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Participant observation was conducted in 24 rehearsals in the Sala de Ensaios of the Oficina Municipal de Teatro group of project A Meu Ver participants. Twenty-two interviews were conducted over two separate time frames. In the first moment, between December 2021 and January 2022, 11 semi-structured project interviews were conducted. Given the pandemic context of COVID-19, the interviews were conducted face-to-face or by telephone, according to the interviewee’s preference. These interviews aimed to get to know the participants; survey their expectations; identify the changes produced by the theatre practice in their daily lives; and describe their relationship with cultural and artistic practices. At this first moment and the beginning of the interview, a questionnaire was applied to collect the participants’ socio-demographic data. In the second moment, 11 interviews were conducted with the same target group in a face-to-face or telephone format, as before. This second moment of interviews was dynamised in April 2022, immediately after the presentation of the theatre play produced by the project - O Que É Invisível - and aimed to collect the concerns, difficulties and challenges faced by project participants, identify and col lect the overcoming strategies mobilised, assess their degree of satisfaction with the project and identify possible impacts of their participation. By the end of the first year, two focus groups were held: one with ACAPO professionals involved in the project and one with Teatrão professionals. In the first case, analysing the participation of ACAPO in the implementation of the project and the process of artistic creation, and in the second case, analysing the project’s impact on Teatrão and its professionals. The focus group with ACAPO included three technicians from the institution (two orientation and mobility technicians and a social worker). The focus group with Teatrão had four people (two members of the management structure and directors of the company, the two trainers of the group, and the directors of the annual presentation). The interviews were audio recorded, later transcribed, and explored through thematic analysis (^{Attride-Stirling, 2001}; ^{Braun & Clarke, 2006}), allowing us to identify and analyse the dominant themes.

All interviewees were previously informed of the objectives of the interviews. The interviews were scheduled and conducted after the interviewee accepted the informed consent protocol. The interviewer verbally told and provided the written information contained in it and subsequently checked the acceptance of those involved in the study.

4.1. Artistic Experience and Cultural Participation

These impacts of the project A Meu Ver are aligned with the objectives defined by Teatrão in its application, to make visible that the problems of disability are related to the forms of social organisation and not the body’s functional capabilities. Making the experience of disability collective through artistic practice and identity embodiment allowed the project to contribute to the deconstruction of a medical concept of disability and the dissemination of a social understanding of disability. As we could witness through the different moments of observation, the fictional construction of other realities provided by the practice of artistic experience created, in this first phase of the project, a group consciousness in the people participating and in their primary support networks. On the other hand, the public presentation of a performance, which stemmed from a joint effort between all participants, brought into the public sphere a statement about the role artistic activity can play in the mediation between the Teatrão and a group of disabled people, traditionally excluded from the cultural circuits, seen as potential active and participatory audiences of cultural activity. The data from the participant observation and the interviews showed, precisely, the concern of the work’s coordination team in preserving the different types of participation and contributions of the people involved, both in the writing process and in the construction of the play O Que É Invisível. During the play’s writing and construction process, the participants actively contributed to this process by formulating opinions, suggestions and specific ideas, expressing their interests and their availability to take on certain roles in the show, and, in a later stage of the show’s preparation, by making suggestions for changing parts of the text and adapting the scenic device to the specific individual needs of movement and spatial orientation. This active participation of disabled people in the construction of the script, in the definition, arrangement and even construction of the scenic elements is quite evident in the following testimonies taken from the interviews: “yes, yes. That first initial text, the one that was recorded, I made the first draft” (Interviewee 6, interview, April 14, 2022).

I did. I did. Before the first scene, before that scene was written, it was discussed with X [director] at the time, and he wrote that first scene according to what we had previously discussed. After the text, there was one or another thing that I also talked about with X [director] - even over the phone - that we made these small changes to the text. That was regarding the first scene. The second scene, ( ... ) in the matter of the stage and costumes, yes. The suggestion that we should dress, for example, in white or be dressed in white or a very light colour, was a suggestion that I made. The suggestion of the things on stage, except for one thing, was also made by me: the bathtub, things that were already old, reminiscent of ... things that were put aside and are no longer used because they’re broken. ( ... ) So, these suggestions were given, they were made, and that was the participation I had. Then the connection, the whole narration, was also presented, it was discussed - I always spoke with X [the director], who wrote it, to get my perception from there and also to understand what X’s [director] perception was, and the perception was undoubtedly identical, and then that whole narration was built: allowing it to be that link, that connection between the various scenes. People being, eventually, not totally unsupported or disconnected in that sense. I participated. And the mask, including that plaster mask that was in the first scene, that mask was actually made - I was there at the Teatrão for about an hour and a half with plaster on my face to make the mould of that mask. Then it was worked on and put on. So, I was involved in several things. (Interviewee 10, interview, April 21, 2022)

During the second moment of interviews, which took place after the public presentation of the play, it was possible to observe that participation in the project enabled the participants to access the theatrical artistic practice as audience members. For some of these people, this experience meant opening doors to a new reality and cultural dynamics to which they had little or no access. For such, it is worth noting the investment of this theatre company in the acquisition of an audio description booth, as well as the availability of audio description and translation services into Portuguese sign language in all shows performed since the beginning of this project. This greater participation in shows is mentioned by several of our interviewees: “yes, maybe I’ve been to more shows at the Teatrão than I have in a long time. In the past, I was single and went to the cinema. I think I had never been to the theatre” (Interviewee, interview, April 19, 2022)”, “it changed a little because we were offered other events as well” (Interviewee 7, interview, April 14, 2022) and “the theatre thing allowed me, for example, to go to plays more often. I was already doing it before, but it was just very occasionally. Now, it has become a little more consistent” (Interviewee 10, interview, April 21, 2022).

It was also interesting to see how the activation of this cultural participation process of people with visual impairment, started by the project, enhanced their greater participation in the community and, consequently, contributed to their process of social inclusion. This process seems to have stemmed from a confluence of factors, among which we highlight: the interaction of the project’s coordination with the municipality of Coimbra in the implementation and facilitation of mobility and transport options to and from the location of the project’s rehearsals, the Oficina Municipal de Teatro; the investment, previously described, of Teatrão in removing barriers to access and experience of theatre practice; and, very important in the interviewees’ accounts, the recognition and valuing of their voices, opinions, experiences and readings. The importance given by the participants to the access to and participation in cultural practices was underlined by one of the ACAPO technicians responsible for this group whom we interviewed in a focus group:

it is mainly about the possibility of enjoying a right like any other citizen; access to culture has to be a right, not only for people with visual impairment but for any other person. And the fact of being able to access culture easily in the same way as another person with no disability, I think that turns out to be an added value, and these people feel it ( ... ). Or I want to be part of it ( ... ). In this case, it is to be part of it. (Technician from the Associação dos Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal - Focus Group 1, July 18, 2022)

Our data thus demonstrate that the process of cultural mediation, in this specific case promoted by A Meu Ver, transforms the participants on an individual and social level, to which the artistic component included in the training dimension of the project must be added. Among the changes on an individual level, noticeable in some of the voices below, are increased concentration and motivation daily, greater self-esteem and sense of personal achievement, and greater decision-making ability, besides aspects of voice placement and body posture.

The change I feel is that I feel more motivated. Nothing else has changed significantly, but at least I feel more motivated, more fulfilled. It’s still while I’m busy, when I fall into the void, things are not so simple. At least in that part, I have moments of feeling really good. Longer. ( ... ) Yes, it brought me advantages. To make my decision easier, in the participations that may happen, I decide with more determination. (Interviewee 3, interview, April 13, 2022)

[Interviewer] Do you mean that this has brought you some changes, although few, that have benefited your life? [Interviewee] And I also notice, at this moment, more concentrated at work and in my daily life (Interviewee 5, interview, April 27, 2022).

“It has changed! Besides me being already positive in my life, in my problems, in my situation, it changed because I am sure (and I really am) that my energy, my selfesteem became much more, much higher” (Interviewee 9, interview, April 18, 2022).

Yes, more at ease. More at ease with people, more playful perhaps. More at ease in certain situations; in others, the theatre and not only - but now it is the theatre that we are talking about - worked the part of concentration, the part of memory, the part of the postural correction. It worked on various aspects. These aspects are then integrated into daily life, into everyday life; at various moments, they are integrated in a very normal and dynamic way, as things are supposed to be. So, there wasn’t a radical change, something... I was like that up to this point, and from then on, I was totally different - no, there was no such change; but there were small changes that were integrated over time and keep being integrated. (Interviewee 10, interview, April 21, 2022)

However, this process of individual and social transformation enhanced by the artistic and cultural practice lacks support from artistic and cultural entities. Although it is not possible to state that the project A Meu Ver produced a deep and lasting impact on the structure and professionals of this theatre company, the words of one of the directors of Teatrão, interviewed in a focus group context, show that there is an awareness of this need and right of disabled people. As well as some permeability to the emergence of new narratives and new theatre languages:

this notion of starting to promote more and more activities with the participation of people with disabilities will make the current aesthetics of art contemplate these people in the milieu as well. And also, sometimes, it is an exercise of our humility, of realising that, perhaps, there doesn’t have to be a previous need among people with disabilities. That is, here it is about doing one thing at the same time. It is about making this symbiosis of presenting and doing, letting things contaminate. (Director and professional of Teatrão - Focus Group 2, August 8, 2022)

4.2. Cultural Participation and Social Inclusion

Access to culture and artistic practice becomes essential to the realisation of the right to culture, to the affirmation of disability culture and to the construction of a culture where all people feel represented. The cultural practice provided to disabled people participating in the project A Meu Ver provided several impacts on their daily lives beyond this cultural dimension. As it was possible to verify during the first moment of interviews, the initial motivation for most participants to participate in the project was the need for an activity outside their daily life, as exemplified by the testimony of this participant: “it’s more to get out of the house for a while, I’m always here during the day. On Thursdays when I go, I’m ready by this time. I catch the bus at two-thirty, at that bus stop there” (Interviewee 4, interview, December 18, 2021).

Considering this motivation, it is not surprising that the main changes reported by the participants at this stage are of a social and spatial nature. They are changes arising from the greater mobility of participants out of their family context and private sphere, produced by their participation in rehearsals and project activities. This change was facilitated by the orientation training given by ACAPO Coimbra to the project participants to increase their familiarity with the route to and from the Oficina Municipal de Teatro and the encouragement and diligence developed by Teatrão to promote the use of public transport. Some of the testimonies collected show this transformation: “now in terms of transport, I started to use a bus which was not even familiar to me, I didn’t use it, which is the 24T. I had never used it before and I started using it in a more usual way” (Interviewee 10, April 21, 2022).

Knowing the routes to come autonomously. Because none of them knew how to come to the Teatrão, none. ( ... ) Neither had ever come. ( ... ). The recognition of routes, listing available transportation, all this training was done, and people are coming and going autonomously. (Technician from the Associação dos Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal - Focus Group 1, July 18, 2022)

This impact is especially relevant since, as it has been reported, most disabled people still live in contexts of great social isolation arising from the lack of accessibility in the surrounding physical environment. It prevents them from leaving home and moving around in their area of residence, as well as of their remaining in residential structures far away from the community and the labour market, with clear prejudice for their involvement in networks of sociability and social participation. As the data from the last Portuguese population censuses revealed, the percentage of people aged five years or more with an impairment living in collective-type accommodation is much higher than that of people without any impairment (8% versus 1.5% respectively) and of the total number of people with motor impairment, 68.1% live in accommodations without accessibility for people in wheelchairs (^{Instituto Nacional de Estatística, I.P., 2022}). Added to these physical barriers are the economic barriers to social participation. As the 2021 census also shows, of the total number of people with any impairment aged 15 or over, only 15.6% were active in the labour market, compared to 58.5% of people in the same age group without any impairment. In addition, 71.9% of people with impairments had a retirement or pension as a source of income (^{Instituto Nacional de Estatística, I.P., 2022}). The relevance of the project to combat this social isolation is clear in the words of another ACAPO technician from Coimbra, also interviewed within the same focus group:

some people with ( ... ) visual impairment would like to go and do not go due to the constraints they feel and the difficulties they experience before getting there. In terms of mobility, transport, even in terms of the show ( ... ), not to mention the other challenges. ( ... ) Many end up isolated. There are one or two that don’t live here in the city and are more isolated and in villages, small places... they don’t socialise as much. So, I think that this, for the isolation ( ... ), I think it is very important. (Technician from the Associação dos Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal - Focus Group 1, July 18, 2022)

In addition to the increased opportunities for social interaction provided by the project, there is also an opportunity to raise community awareness about disability issues and systematic integration into the space and practice of theatre for everyone, regardless of whether they have or not some impairment. The same technician also highlights this normalisation and systematic integration of the difference:

because many people, besides suffering from the stigma of being blind or having low vision, also do not identify as such. Therefore, in everything they do in their daily life, they try to avoid anything unrelated to an Associação de Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal. In other words, participating in Teatrão and being here at Teatrão makes things normal. Those who like to do theatre go to Teatrão, and anyone can go. (Technician from the Associação dos Cegos e Amblíopes de Portugal - Focus Group 1, July 18, 2022)

The awareness of and for theatre culture is, however, the most evident impact of this project. The facilitation and promotion of this artistic practice’s consumption by the project and the company management allowed greater access to theatre performances, in some cases even initiation into the consumption of this practice, considering that some of these people had never had the opportunity to attend a theatre performance. Because of their specific needs to experience a play where visual and audio elements are often combined, people with any visual impairment have been excluded from the existing theatre productions available in most Portuguese cities. The project A Meu Ver has, thus, mediated the first contact and regular and frequent contact with theatre shows, contributing to the realisation of the right to culture and cultural consumption by this group specific group of disabled people who, for the reasons mentioned above, have been particularly distanced. This project is, however, an isolated embryo of what can and should be done to promote the right to culture in its different dimensions and levels of participation. The work is mostly still to be done, as one of Teatrão’s directors points out:

We know how difficult it is. That’s why mediation is so important for Teatrão because it is closely linked to the genesis of the company, to issues such as arts education and the advocacy that artistic activity should be part of public education, that schools should have access to and artistic practice in their curricula, I mean... this is part of our work philosophy. ( ... ) There is also a need for cultural agents and teams, and the municipality itself or those who think the cultural policies should have specific training in this area. (Director and professional of Teatrão - Focus Group 2, August 8, 2022)

Nevertheless, social inclusion in and through culture is an open-ended process requiring constant investment, awareness, and monitoring by the parties involved.