In face of humankind’s history of war and peace, as well as the migratory movements and ethnic and cultural conflicts, the international community agrees on the need for dialog between cultures, be them singular or hybrid (CANCLINI, 1995), complementary or/and contradictory. Within this framework, school becomes the space for the reproduction of “made-up” cultures, while it can also be understood as a space for transmutation and a bridge.

The integrated educational system for early childhood has been implemented in European countries. In those, there are policies meant to provide immigrants and ethnic minorities with “[…] access to services that benefit children so that they and their families can be immersed in the language and traditions of the society in which they live; while, at the same time, parents are given the opportunity to establish social bonds and create networks for exchanges” (UNESCO, 2002).

This research is promoting and recognizing local and foreign pedagogical practices – namely from portuguese speaking African countries (PSAC - Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe) – and the creative and critic dialog between sciences and policies (RAMOS et al., 2013; MALOMALO et al., 2016) that enable us to reflect different aspects of arts, culture, geography, time, history, and pedagogy in an original manner that can be translated into field analyses.

While analyzing intercultural education in Europe, Portela (2014, p.8) concludes that it is necessary to have semantic and epistemological clarity when dealing with this plurality of meanings. For him, “There is a game, an ‘interaction’, between people with different ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds in which the aim is not assimilation or fusion, but encounter, communication, dialogue, contact, in which roles and limits are clear, but the end is open”. In South America, Walsh (2014, p. 11-12) approaches interculturality as the process of building new ways of being, thinking, living, and coexisting. Thus, he states that “No es agumentar a partir de la simple relación entre grupos, práticas o pensamentos culturales, [...] a partir de La creación de programas ‘especialies’ que permiten la educación ‘normal’ y ‘universal’ sigua perpetuando practicas y pensamentos racializados y excludentes”.

Within modern educational systems, which still carry colonial ‘molds’, there are social, artistc and pedagogical practices that strengthen walls, currencies, and boundaries of a physical, economical and symbolic nature that seek to assert a group as hegemonic and institutionalize its cultural identity. As a result of this modus operandi, cultural conflicts arise on a daily basis. This leads us to question, then, what kind of interculturality has been implemented in the Portugal educational systems in hopes of promoting integration? In what way has Portugal, its schools and communities been able to promote the socioeconomic, cognitive and cultural integration of immigrants from  PSACs? 

The problems of communities and schooling in Brazil, Portugal and PSACs are very similar, although seen through a peculiar historical perspective, as they reveal cultural conflicts between I and the Other when it comes to recognizing themselves, relating to each other and working together.

The above mentioned issue sets the goals of systematizing how artistic, pedagogical, community and intercultural practices have been promoting dialogs between different cultures found in preschool classrooms, especially concerning African, Afrodiasporic children living in Porto. With these specific goals, we intend to review the relevant literature on the topic and contributions made by European, African and Brasilians intellectuals, in addition to analyzing the educational system, particularly the projects and practices pertaining to language, curriculum, artistic and cultural expressions, rites, socioeconomic and cultural integration, and points of contact between families and the school.

Considering that the work of deconstructing colonialism, and the various forms it manifests, is not limited to the production of theoretical knowledge, but to a praxis in which art and the body also hold a position that enables the overrating of scientific and technological innovations to be overturned, intercultural artistic-pedagogic practices are able to express, socialize, resist, and interfere upon reality, identity, and otherness. Art is the synthesis, the product and the producer of meanings, and builds itself as a reflective and contaminating instance. Such constructions mobilize new identities, recognition and appreciation of cultural differences, and it seems fitting to highlight the importance of the intercultural education of children, which should be mediated by art – a necessary means with its multiple perspectives of wonder, and as an example we could mention introductory activities that use the body, music, instruments, painting with/on different materials and techniques, modeling, theatre, photography, production of musical instruments and toys made with repurposed materials, etc. The qualitative, documental and empiric study of two schools attended by the sons of lusophone African immigrants are reviewing theoretical assumptions and are using the following data collection tools: the monitoring of pedagogical practices and integration of lusophone children; 8 (eight) interviews with 2 (two) pedagogical coordinators, 2 (two) teachers, 2 (two) parentes and 2 (two) african artists; iconographic records of the pedagogical-artistic intercultural practices; and the development of field notes. Such procedures and elements for the analyzes of results will be made possible through studies and the use of NVivo, a software for qualitative data analyses. The following categories will be reviewed: pedagogical practices in preschool, cultural education, interculturality, and art of education. Both the universe and the target of the research should be noted. Historically, immigrants lived on the outskirts of large cities (LOPES, 2015, GUSMÃO, 2005), today, in the face of emerging educational immigration and economic crisis, small university cities have become important locus for such studies. In this way, we chose Porto as the universe of this study.The fact that the study favored the education of children born in PSAC or those whose parents are PSAC immigrants in Portugal can be justified by my professional involvement at the University for the International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB), where I have been active in undergraduate and graduate programs through the training of teachers and researchers born in Brazil and PSAC.

From the experience of teaching at UNILAB and in this study, we realize that daughters of African children grow immersed in the culture of the place they inhabit and of their ancestors. Such an intercultural encounter, depending on the socio-economic and cognitive situation of the family members and the integration policies of the country, can promote the inclusion or exclusion of these and their descendants. In the face of the global economic crisis since 2007, LOPES (2015) points out that wage reductions, unemployment and consequent subsidy losses have encouraged re-emigration. Another predominant factor in Portugal has been the naturalization and, in rare cases, of return to the country of origin. Intercultural pedagogical projects and practices constitute an object of continuous analysis, since the Brazilian experience has promoted an exclusionary schooling (RAMOS, 2009), when children do not appropriate the signs, codes and languages that make possible the socio-economic insertion and cognitive. The artistic and community practices are located and result from the insertion of the parents in these circles of coexistence. Regarding intercultural pedagogical practices, in spite of Law 10645/08, which institutionalizes the teaching of African, Afro-Diasporic and indigenous history and culture in Brazil, they are punctual and unsystematic (RAMOS, MARTINS, 2015). Thus, I believe it is important to assert that this research holds great value for humanities from here and there – who are about to bear new historical figures; citizens who respect and appreciate diversity, be it ethnic-racial, gender, sexual, regional, national, and international – as it establishes dialogs and cooperation between Brazil, Germany, and PSAC, and broadens and qualifies the collaboration between professor researchers, in addition to granting international visibility to the Brazilian scientific, technological, and cultural production. After all, we are all one! Ubuntu! This is the purpose of our research.

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