It is generally accepted that the activity of drawing creates shared circuits between active perception, cognition and creativity, thus playing a constitutive role in the production and communication of knowledge. In recent years, there has been an increasing proliferation of drawing based research developing new approaches to integrating drawing within the curriculum of university teaching, as a means of enhancing general literacy, problem solving and discovery, alongside STEM areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Anderson, 2014, 2017; Gansterer, 2011; Tversky, 1999). However, there has been little work regarding the experiencial impact of drawing in the context of Portuguese University, a work that bridges the divide between the views of artists, researchers, professors and students that use drawing as a tool of inquiry, communication and record outside the traditional areas to which it is commonly associated.

The vídeo presentation reflects an experience occurred since 2014, within the project Drawing in the University Today’, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto and the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences. The students from fine arts and from medicine were challenged in terms of their territories of knowledge. We will present and discuss the project.

This lack of research has resulted in an uncertainty regarding the approaches that may be most effective in image-based methodologies in research and pedagogy. ‘Drawing in the University Today’ aim is to undertake a critical study on the use of drawing in the Faculties, laboratories and research centers of the University of Porto. Beyond the focus on art and design, The University of Porto provides a context where drawing in architecture and urbanism, civil engineering and mechanics, biology and mathematics, archeology and geography, medicine and sports can be addressed within a within a framework that recognizes the singularities of drawing within all these territories – and by confronting its differences, we can also find its common ground. The research is based in the survey, archive and critical analysis of the ways of using drawing as a tool of inquiry and pedagogy in contemporary university. From this survey results a selection made by the partners within the Departments and Research Centers collaborating in the Project. It has an editorial and expositive intent, as well as a pedagogical applicability within the scope of the training graduated offer of drawing accordingly to the singularities of each scientific area. In an integrated way, it seeks to foster a shared research experience between artists and scientific contexts at the University of Porto, capable of developing situated processes of creative research that bring together practices, questions, knowledge and common objects.

We consider the project ‘Drawing in the University Today’ to be divided in three parts, corresponding to the sequential phases of its development. These parts are, nonetheless, mutually implied in their purposes and outcomes

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