Inclusion through Music

Since 2019, Fundação Galp has supported Som Sim Zero, an artistic project for social inclusion that brings together the São Miguel Island Association of the Deaf and the Rabo de Peixe Music School, under the direction of the artistic collective Ondamarela. The initiative explores the relationship between sound and space for those who live in a world of silence, in a work developed by the Tremor Festival in the Azores, where Som Sim Zero have presented concerts and artistic residencies.

Tremor: The Festival

Tremor is a cultural and artistic festival that takes São Miguel as a privileged stage for music. It includes a diverse programme and brings together concerts, interactions in the landscape, laboratories, moments dedicated to thought, art and artistic residencies that merge with the local community. 

More information about the festival here.

Som Sim Zero at Tremor 2022

Documentary

Music is not just another art. It is language, energy and it touches people's hearts. So deeply that it ends up being "heard" even in the silence of those who don't know what a chord, a beat, a voice sounds like. You don't know, but you feel.

"I never thought that when I play I would feel this, it's like an earthquake", explains the artist Romana Valéria with her expressive movements of the Portuguese Sign Language with which she communicates.

This is what the most recent documentary of the project Som Sim Zero shows us - a band made up of members of the Association of the Deaf of São Miguel Island (ASISM), of the Rabo de Peixe Music School, led by the artistic collective Ondamarela.

In this year's edition, the Choir of São José and the Association of the Deaf of Ilha de São Miguel (ASISM) joined forces, bringing excitement to the Colégio Church, a very different space from previous editions, more "silent" and less vibrations, which represented added challenges for the deaf participants.

The sounds of those who can hear were mixed with those who cannot hear, constituting a unique musical experience."

Watch the documentary

Som Sim Zero at RiR 2022

Documentary

In 2022, the Azorean orchestra left the island, a new experience for most of the participants, carrying in its luggage dreams, instruments and expectations, to headline Rock in Rio de Lisboa with a show vibrant with energy and emotion.

A moment that served as a motto for a wave of mobilisation around social inclusion, encouraging each of us to look at diversity for its value and richness, blurring stigmas and thus building a more humane society.

The collective of 22 artists who performed on stage showed that "No man is an island" and that music has the power to blur differences and unite people around this art of universal language.

Watch the documentary.

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