Welcome message

It is an honor and a privilege to welcome teachers, institute directors, participants, helpers, sponsors and supporters to “The Expressive Arts Spring Symposium 2011”, which will be the first symposium ever hosted by the European Graduate School (Switzerland) in Lisbon, Portugal.

Human beings are makers and shapers of their worlds. Everything that exists has been shaped by some kind of human intervention. However, many times we find ourselves in “locked situations” of personal, group or community suffering, where we have misshaped our world or cannot find the resources to re-shape it. Arts are deliberate acts of shaping. Artists work with materials to bring about forms and help us to see the world from a multiplicity of perspectives. By engaging in art-making, we can expand possibilities, increase capacities, and widen our range. In this way, art-making can help us to bring about change on both the personal and social level. The arts can carry us to distant shores to mourn and also to celebrate.

The right that all sentient human beings have to understand and freely participate in the cultural life of their world is a simple, but

sometimes very difficult task to handle. Occasions such as the opportunity offered here to further this goal are rare and should be treasured. I hope you will take from this huge networking opportunity, the kind of insight, inspiration, and motivation that will serve to improve the effectiveness and appropriateness of the expressive arts practice in your own cultural contexts.

This symposium is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary exchange between the arts and other disciplines. This year, leaders of the field of the expressive arts from North America and Europe will help us travel to unknown lands through visual art, music, movement, theatre and clowning.

We will lend the climate, colors, gastronomy, history, diverse cultural life and the breathtaking landscape in the surroundings to your visit and to this event.

I wish you an inspiring, art-full and happy symposium and hope you share the pleasure of many stimulating intellectual and loving exchanges in this wonderfully rich historic setting of Lisbon. Let yourself enter a world of possibilities.