MUS-E Portugal Celebrates 30 Years: Highlights from the Leiria Education Forum

On 8 September, the Teatro José Lúcio da Silva in Leiria hosted a special international gathering: “MUS-E Portugal: 30 Years of Art and Inclusion – Building the Future,” held as part of the XVII Education Forum of the Municipality of Leiria, organised in partnership with the Associação Yehudi Menuhin Portugal (AYMP) and the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation (IYMF). 

After a working lunch with the Mayor and the Municipality of Leiria, AYMP and IYMF joined an international gathering marking three decades since MUS-E first arrived in Portugal. The afternoon brought together MUS-E speakers from Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain and Portuguese municipal leaders, educators, artists, students to look back on what the programme has built, and to look ahead at what comes next, in front of an audience of around 500 teachers and school authorities. 

Opening 

The event opened with remarks from Gonçalo Lopes, Mayor of Leiria, who traced MUS-E’s presence in the city back to 1999 and reflected on how the programme’s values remain just as relevant today. He was followed by Guilherme D’Oliveira Martins, President of AYMP and former Minister of Education, who spoke about the connection between MUS-E, the city of Leiria, Yehudi Menuhin’s legacy, and the wider educational and cultural mission the programme carries forward. 

International Roundtable: “The Arts as a Path to Inclusion, Participation, and the Future of Schools” 

Moderated by Jorge Brites, Director of the Marrazes School Cluster, the roundtable brought together voices from across the MUS-E network and its local partners. 

Dr. Anabela Graça, Councillor for Education at Leiria Municipal Council, opened by describing MUS-E as far more than a project: it is a space where artists and teachers work in genuine dialogue, as seen in the Marrazes school, home to children of nearly 40 nationalities. For her, art functions as a common language with tangible, lasting impact — and MUS-E, she affirmed, has a future in Leiria. 

Maria Leonor Cambournac, board member of AYMP and National Coordinator of MUS-E Portugal, traced the history of MUS-E in Portugal, active since 1996, and the creation of the association in 2000. She then took stock of MUS-E’s reach across the country — Lisbon, Oeiras, Évora and Leiria — and presented the MUS-E Portugal promotional video. 

Marianne Poncelet, Executive Vice-President of International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, spoke about Yehudi Menuhin’s original vision for the programme and traced its evolution from those early ideas to where MUS-E stands today — the power of music against intolerance, racism and fear of the other, and the importance of the arts in education for learning and growth. She pointed to the MUS-E network’s reach across 13 countries and to evaluations at national and international level showing the programme’s impact. She also underlines the key role of MEP Helena Vaz da Silva in implementing MUS-E in Portugal.  

Werner Schmitt, co-founder of MUS-E alongside Yehudi Menuhin, shared the story of the programme’s origins — a story he called an honour to tell in front of Portugal’s own 30-year milestone. He recalled first meeting Menuhin in 1986 through the European String Teachers Association, a friendship that led, on a September afternoon in 1992 at Menuhin’s chalet in Gstaad, to a conversation about the shrinking space for arts education and its social cost. That conversation reached UNESCO within weeks: Menuhin secured a meeting in Paris with then Director-General Federico Mayor, who encouraged the two to turn their idea into a project. A first expert conference in Gstaad in 1993 — with Portugal represented by Prof. Jorge Santos and Mrs. Graziella Cintra Gomes — produced the founding MUS-E Guidelines, built on three pillars: the pedagogy of Zoltán Kodály, a Swiss study linking music education to stronger social competences without any loss in other subjects, and a Bernese pilot bringing artists into classrooms. Schmitt traced the programme’s growth from two pilot classes in Bern in 1993 to a network that today, he noted, has reached more than two million children. He closed with a tribute to the artists, teachers and coordinators who carry the network forward, and with one of Menuhin’s own guiding convictions: that mutual respect and tolerance through the arts are the key to living together. 

António Merino Collantes, Project Coordinator at Fundacion Yehudi Menuhin Espana (FYME) (Spain), spoke about European projects and urged teachers and schools to take part the essential role of teachers and schools within them. 

A video message from MUS-E Belgium — National Coordinator Tom Goris, Local Coordinator Ruben Vandersteen and other team members — brought a further national perspective into the room, centred on art, creativity, active art and fun. 

A solo violin intermezzo — the Allemande from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor — and a musical intermezzo, Aria, from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, performed for violin and guitar, punctuated the afternoon.