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O Tempo (Somos Nós)', performance June 3rd 2022, Leiria, Portugal © Gil de Lemos/SAMP

Four professional Portuguese singers performed the main roles in a new opera based on Homer's "Odyssey" at a packed concert hall in Portugal's capital Lisbon in mid-June.

Also on the stage that evening were 16 amateur performers from the central Portuguese city of Leiria, where they are members of the city's "school prison" population. The prison houses offenders in the age range of around 16 to 21 years.

What's more, a second group of Leiria inmates took part in the performance by video link from a stage that was located back in the jail 150 km away.

Welcome to TRACTION, a European research project that tackles social exclusion through the use of opera. The people behind it are redefining what is often perceived as an elite activity so that some of society's most-marginalised groups – young offenders, migrants and the rural poor to name but three – can find expression for themselves.

Credit: cortada.com

Hello, it's time to

Xavier Cortada launched his newest socially engaged art project, "HELLO," ahead of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) on Wednesday, Oct. 27th, 2021 with Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

Image: cortada.com

AN EYE OPENING PROJECT 

"DO NOT OPEN" is a participatory art project, organized and lead by Prof. Xavier Cortada.  Its goal is to provoke a first-hand awareness  on climate change and the way it affects our life and the life of those coming after us. Because it is true that for many people (or should we say for most of the people) climate change is still something distant, something chimerical, something that is not relevant to them - not now, not in this moment. Yet, Prof. Cortada proves us wrong. He makes us, or actually let's say, he helps us see, admit and acknowledge the personal (and global) effects of climate change.  Because this is the only way a change could be made. Not via impersonal narration, but via personal interpretation.