Detalhes do Documento

This dissertation, developed within the scope of the master's degree in Adult Education and Training, is entitled Art as a Device for (Re)construction and Emancipation: The Aesthetic Experience of Young Women in Residential Care. The study seeks to understand how artistic practices, mediated with pedagogical intentionality and ethical care, can foster processes of expression, listening, belonging, narrative reconstruction and imagination of the future among young women in institutional care. The research was carried out at the Associação Católica Internacional ao Serviço da Juventude Feminina do Porto, with participants whose life trajectories are shaped by early motherhood, social vulnerability, migration, grief, precariousness and uncertainty about the future. Framed within a qualitative interpretative-critical approach, the study adopted a multimethod and triangulated strategy, combining participant observation, a research diary, artistic productions, spontaneous sharing, informal conversations, personal reflection sheets, evaluation questionnaires on cultural visits and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, used as a complementary and descriptive instrument. Throughout the process, artistic-educational sessions were developed using languages such as colour, music, poetic writing, collage, masks, letters, photography, modelling and cultural visits. The analysis highlighted art as a language of expression, symbolisation and shelter, fostering trust, belonging, recognition, self-care, narrative reconstruction and future projection. The results show that aesthetic experience does not eliminate the structural conditions of vulnerability, nor does it produce linear or generalisable transformations. However, it can open possibilities for subjective reconstruction, agency and situated emancipation. The study also revealed challenges associated with group instability, the presence of children, fatigue, relational conflicts, institutional constraints and the need for specialised psychological support. It concludes that art, when sustained by ethical, sensitive and pedagogically intentional mediation, can become an educational practice of humanity, recognition and meaning making in residential care contexts.