Goals
1. Developing literacy skills through artistic creation: Encouraging pupils to improve their reading and writing skills, using visual expression as a means of facilitating the process of textual interpretation and expression.
2. Cultivating aesthetic sensibility and critical thinking in a creative context: To promote, through both writing inspired by images and the illustration of texts, aesthetic appreciation, critical analysis and reflective engagement with artistic and literary works.
3. Explore the impact of different roles within the collaborative creative process: Understand how the roles of observer, creator (writer/illustrator) and reader influence engagement, persistence and the development of a more meaningful relationship with artistic and textual production.

Target group and educational context
One language teacher (Portuguese), one arts teacher (Drawing), one Science and Technolgy class (12.º grade) and one Arts class (12.º grade).

This practice is designed for teachers working in pairs across disciplines — specifically a language/literature teacher and a visual arts teacher who are willing to co-design and co-facilitate a shared project. It requires openness to formative and informal learning, comfort with relinquishing control over outcomes (since there are no "right" answers), and genuine interest in the creative process as a pedagogical tool. It suits educators who value collaborative planning and are prepared to coordinate schedules, share student work across classes, and organize joint sessions. The project was designed for 12th grade students (aged 17–18) from two different courses — Sciences and Technology and Visual Arts — and this cross-course pairing is actually central to its design. It works precisely because the students come from different academic cultures: the science students bring observational precision and narrative instinct; the arts students bring visual literacy and aesthetic sensibility. Neither group is "complete" without the other. The practice also suits students who may be resistant or indifferent to creative work, since the article reports initial mistrust from the science class that gave way to full engagement — suggesting the model is robust enough to work even without prior motivation.
The project fits naturally within formal secondary education, specifically in systems where:
- interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches are encouraged or permitted within the curriculum framework
- there is flexibility in how citizenship education or cross-curricular competences are delivered
- at least two teachers can coordinate time and content across subjects
In the Portuguese system, it connects directly to the Domains of the Drawing A curriculum (Appropriation and Reflection; Interpretation and Communication; Experimentation and Creation) and to the Portuguese Language curriculum competences in Literary Education, Reading and Writing. However, the model is transferable to any context where a language/literature subject and a visual arts subject coexist at secondary level.
The model can scale into a multilingual, multicultural, transnational dimension — making it relevant not only to national curricula but also to European collaborative education programs.

How to implement
Activities and Intervening actors
1st Phase
1 - Presentation of the project to the two classes by the teachers of Portuguese and Drawing A.
2 - Production of narrative-descriptive texts, through observation (individual task) by the students in the Portuguese class (Science Course).
3 - Production of images from the texts of the Science class (individual task) by the students of the Drawing class (Arts Course).
4 - 1st Meeting with the two teachers and all the students to share the work done (texts and illustrations).
2nd Phase
5 - Production of freestyle images (individual task) by the students in the Drawing class (Arts Course).
6 - Production of poetic texts from the images of the Arts class (individual task) by the students in the Portuguese class (Science Course).
7 - 2nd Meeting with the two teachers and all the students to share work carried out with both classes (illustrations and poems).
8 - Filling in a questionnaire to evaluate the activity (individual task) by all the students.
9 - Disclosure of results: all students and teachers.

Why it is inspiring
1. The project is based on a solid scientific foundation. Paivio’s dual-code theory (1971) demonstrates that combining verbal and visual processing enhances not only the acquisition of knowledge but also its long-term retention. The article also cites neuroscience research that highlights the value of learning environments rich in sensory stimuli — and this project is precisely that: seeing, reading, feeling, imagining, writing, drawing.
The sequence of activities is another decisive factor. It is not a matter of two subjects coexisting, but of a creative chain in which each output feeds into the next: observation generates the text, the text generates the illustration, the illustration generates the poem. This circularity gives coherence to the process and keeps pupils motivated because each stage has a real recipient — a classmate.
2. There is something particularly beautiful about this project: subjectivity is embraced as a value. The students discover that the same text can evoke radically different images, and that the same image can inspire poems that are incomparable to one another. The article describes a revealing moment: one student described his motorbike as a ‘female character’, whilst his art student classmate interpreted it as a relationship between two people. The author of the text was surprised — and that surprise is learning.
Instead of the vertical, hierarchical structure of traditional teaching, a horizontal network of meanings is proposed, closer to the way young people navigate the world (cf. Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic model).
3. Firstly, the results were measurable and positive. The questionnaire administered to 37 students revealed high satisfaction scores (between 4.4 and 4.6 out of 5) across the three main objectives: the development of critical thinking and aesthetic sensibility, the encouragement of intertextual reading, and the promotion of active and cooperative citizenship.
Secondly, it worked even in an adverse context. The 12.º degree is an exam year, a time of greater resistance to projects that ‘distract’ from academic preparation. Even so, participation was 100% and motivation grew progressively, especially after the first inter-class sharing session. This is significant.
Thirdly, it can be replicated with simple resources. The Eça de Queiroz archive was available online via the Foundation; the institutional Drive was used to share poems; an exhibition at the school and the dissemination of the results via the Foundation facebook page and the publication of the article completed the cycle.

Links and further information
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ARIS/article/view/90558/4564456567780