Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing is an extension of thought, a contribution to acquiring and producing knowledge. This article presents a project carried out in a Portuguese school where ethnographic methodologies were the starting point for drawing and then illustrating.

Paper Abstract:

In the context of Complementary Art Education (CEA), based on encouraging spontaneous action, facilitating free expression, experimentation and allowing communication to be explored, has been proposed to carry out projects where interdisciplinarity can be a central resource. CEA is a contribution to intellectual formation, development of knowledge and skills, a stimulus to the senses, to imagination, to a process rather than a final product, inserted in a school environment that works development of sensitivity and expressiveness and bringing together the socio-affective, cognitive, psychomotor and communication components, rather than just aiming for certain learning outcomes. Also contributed to critical reflections on creativity, as well as development of a critical and self-critical sense in problem-solving, since it works using design methodology. Drawing is another fundamental resource.

In association with the celebrations of the April 25 in Portugal, a project was designed based on ethnographic methodologies, namely the description and interpretation of a social memory, on fieldwork and participant observation for data collection, using interviews.

The aim was detailed descriptions, explained in form of drawings and visual compositions. The students acted as young ethnographers, bearing witness to a past where the intermediary was drawing, seen not only as a capacity for expression or interpretation, but also as a reaction, reflection, symbolic representation of perception and construction of knowledge. This connection was a contribution to personal development, cognitive and sensory-motor level, providing new perspectives, densities and ways of seeing society in a critical and reasoned way, enhancing the development of an innovative pedagogical project.