Teresa Torres de Eça

Teresa Torres de Eça, arts educator specialist, teaching artist, arts-based researcher and visual artist with more than twenty years of experience in arts-based training and participatory arts education projects. She holds a doctoral degree in art education and is often invited to evaluate training programs in arts education. From 2014 to 2019, she served as President of the International Society for Education through Art.

Currently, she works as main researcher of international projects and in-service teacher training at the Association of Teachers of Visual Expression and Communication (APECV) in Portugal. She has coordinated community arts education-based projects, facilitating networks of practice, aiming to create safe spaces for self-expression and sharing stories through aesthetical relationships and arts & making.

As a networker and researcher, her expertise is mainly on coordination and evaluation of collaborative projects. She has extensive experience in using digital tools for internal documentation and to make the projects accessible internationally. As an activist, she firmly believes in the possibilities of arts, design and crafts to develop a sense of belonging to the planet and response-ability through creative expression. As a trainer, Teresa uses peer learning methodologies with artistic processes to raise awareness and facilitate collaborative creation of new educational strategies related to social and environmental justice issues.

In her art educational work, she follows approaches that foster creativity, personal and social skills, community building and critical thinking. She develops learning situations encouraging active engagement with climate justice and social inequalities to foster deeper understanding of societal and cultural contexts, to reflect about and challenging hegemonic narratives. Project-based learning, community building and co-creation are essential didactic approaches in her practice.