Cinco

Special needs is an umbrella term for a wide array of diagnoses, from those that resolve quickly to those that will be a challenge for life and those that are relatively mild to those that are profound. It covers developmental delays, medical conditions, psychiatric conditions, and congenital conditions that require accommodations so children can reach their potentials. (from VeryWellFamily.com) Almost all pupils attend mainstream schools. However, for those whose special needs cannot be met in state schools there are specialized schools like Associação Nós. These photographs were captured between January and June 2015 mainly in the premises of Associação Nós from within the classroom to the street, to the family homes. This partnership conveys a shared vision, an incitement to look beyond Disability, beyond Difference, from the first shock to the dissolving mist of unspoken marginality. Joana, Sofia, Pablo, Bruno, Samir. Five wills, five personalities that we get to know in a slow paced exchange of signs, a less rushed, less immediate communication that guides us through the boundaries of disability to the individual. A nervous laugh, a gaze that holds us, glimpses, gestures, points of light in the heavy blackness of daily dependency, undeniable, but sometimes even imagined, amplified. Cinco is a testimony, a portrayal of special-needs education as a matrix for a truly integrated and diversified teaching, centered on the individual, in a fluid routine that willingly goes beyond the curriculum, that willingly enhances differences with shunning fear curiosity.