Holding signs with messages from April 1974, the students - mostly art students from the Liceu Camões and the António Arroio Secondary School, but also from the Marquesa de Alorna and Gil Vicente schools, and some children from primary school - shouted slogans and sang "Grândola, Vila Morena" by Zeca Afonso, and "E depois do adeus" by Paulo de Carvalho, several times.

João Jesus, a student at the Liceu Camões, explained to Lusa that the young people had gathered to "demand their rights", recalling that students "need to have enough space to show their strength", together with the assistants and teachers, because "all members of the school make a difference and want more visibility".

In the manifesto he was holding in his hand, João Jesus defended "greater visibility in the school, greater visibility of education in the Government, mainly because the State Budget for culture is ridiculous" and "schools that have more artistic intervention" are needed.

"We want schools that are more alive. We want to abolish exams in a certain way. We want more practical classes, we want to be more in touch with the future and the manifesto is not just to talk about our demands, but to talk about our future, because the 25th of April is not over yet", explained the 17-year-old.

The initiative, which started in a class at the Liceu Camões, grew with the association of the National Arts Plan (PNA), which extended the invitation to the 510 school groups/non-grouped schools in its national network. Together, a programme was prepared with exhibitions, shows, debates, also with the support of the Commemorative Commission for the 50th anniversary of April 1974.

All the actions, which started about a year ago, according to Sara Brighenti, deputy commissioner of the PNA, culminated today with the appeal "Todos à Manif" (Everybody to the Protest), "with many schools from all over the country taking to the streets and the students presenting their demands".

"We made a call to these schools in the various cities to demonstrate, bringing not only the principles of April, of freedom of expression and of all freedoms, but also the major issues that move young people, in the appeal for a differentiated school that is more connected with the contemporary world", she explained.

Sara Brighenti summarised to Lusa the young people's list of demands as "a great desire to connect learning to life", and acknowledged that young people like school, "but they need one that gives them content, that makes them more participative, that manages to understand the world in order to choose higher education".

According to the deputy commissioner, another of the major issues for students "is the non-hierarchisation of disciplines, that is, a more transdisciplinary education, where the arts are as important as science, technology, as the humanities - for them, this division makes no sense".

From these young people also comes the alert to the issue of mental health, said Sara Brighenti, recalling that there is "a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress caused by exams".

"We have to think that when they look at life and the future they see it in a more blurred way. The pressure all falls on this generation, which has created many mental health issues, and they are explicit, they are not ashamed to say so - that we should think about new ways of assessing, that it should not be just a test or exam, that we should find more creative ways of doing it".

Matei Cascavel, 17, explained that he was demonstrating today "to have a future as an artist, to see if Portugal continues to give an impetus to art, to culture, to try so that in the future I do not have to emigrate".

The student acknowledged that many of the younger artists leave Portugal "not because of a dislike of the country, but because of the lack of opportunities". Young people, he stressed, are "definitely the future of the country and it is they who have to bring these demonstrations to the streets".

Mariana Pinho is also a nonconformist young woman at the age of 17 and agrees with her colleague from the Liceu Camões, acknowledging that "many artists emigrate because in Portugal there is no stability in this type of profession, especially those who want to pursue theatre".

"We are here fighting for a very important role, because we are in April, the month of revolutions and change. Nowadays the truth is that the arts are very minimised and very little credible, there is much more stage for science courses and this is also seen in job opportunities", she stressed.

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