The ‘Postais’ (Postcards) project was a Music in the Community initiative that took place in 2022, involving a community from an institution for people with functional diversity in Fátima (CRIF) and a local conservatory (Ourearte).
The development of ‘Postais’ began to take shape even before direct contact was established with the community and the school, being conceived as an integral part of my PhD research into Community Music in Portugal. This advance planning made it possible to carefully address the specific needs of the participants. It was essential to initiate contact with the community before involving the school, in order to build a solid relational base, develop inclusive methodologies and adapt instruments to the physical characteristics of the participants. Several of the instruments used during the workshops and performance can be found at Sound Objects.
The project culminated in a public presentation of the same name, entitled ‘Postais’. The name, chosen in collaboration with both communities, refers to the real postcards created and exchanged between the CRIF and Ourearte participants during the workshops. In these meetings, musical stimuli inspired the participants to draw on small rectangles of paper, which were then exchanged between the two institutions. This symbolic exchange maintained communication between the groups until it was possible to bring them together in person, and the postcards created were part of the show’s scenography, offering a visual expression to the project, which until then had focussed predominantly on music.
The title ‘Postais’ also evokes the postcard as a symbol of message transmission, serving as a metaphor for communication and for the potential of artistic objects to go beyond their physical form and convey multiple meanings. This idea arose from the realisation that the two groups worked separately but in parallel and that, despite their geographical proximity, Fátima and Ourém are different cities. Postcards thus represent not only communication, but also the ability of artistic objects to reflect complex meanings, just as the two sides of a postcard reveal either image or text. Through this medium, the project was able to bring together two communities that were initially unknown to each other, but which ended up establishing bonds and relationships through music.
