Sofia Barreira, Marco Mendes, Nuno Sousa and Carlos Pinheiro crossed paths at Belas Artes while they were students, but it was later, when Sofia and Nuno were teaching and attending a master's degree at the Faculty of Architecture in Porto, that the idea was born. ‘On the day I defended my thesis, I felt a huge void,’ says Sofia. ‘Two years of work summed up in a 30-minute conversation. And then I thought: what now? That's when I challenged Nuno to create our own school, our own programme.’

In 2010, they created a club in the literal sense of the word: an association of people brought together by a common interest in a space of autonomy, freedom and collective decision-making. ‘When we started, we created a space that didn't exist anywhere else,’ says Nuno Sousa.

The Drawing Club was “a reaction to several things we didn’t like about teaching and the artistic world,” says Marco Mendes. “And there was a very strong bond and complicity between people, a sharing of values that led us to create a space where we could be more autonomous and freer,” he emphasises.

The original group remained intact and expanded. Today, three more members are part of the artistic direction: Diogo Nogueira, Irene Loureiro, and Sofia Neto.

Diogo, 26, is the youngest member of the team. He was 10 when Clube de Desenho was created. He started out as a student and later joined the collective. "When I entered the Faculty of Fine Arts, I felt I needed some guidance in drawing and this place was recommended to me. I really liked the atmosphere, the people became my friends, and when I finished the course I started collaborating and ended up joining. The Drawing Club was essential for my growth as an artist and teacher," says the artist, who is now doing a master's degree in Painting in Paris.

Diogo is one of the artists featured in the exhibition that opens on 4 July, which is supported by Criatório, a programme that supports artistic creation and programming in the municipality of Porto. ‘We invited Diogo and Irene to be curators and participants in a collective exhibition of younger artists who have passed through Caldas da Rainha,’ says Sofia.

This month, on the 7th, the exhibition A Mão Esquerda das Trevas (The Left Hand of Darkness) by Isabel Carvalho, a multidisciplinary artist from Porto who combines visual arts, writing, editing and book publishing, will open. Then, from 2 May, there will be a new exhibition by Ricardo Baptista, a comic book author.

‘We had support from Criatório, and we will have programming until the end of August, but when there is no support, we still do the exhibitions and “wear the shirt”,’ Sofia assures us, adding that ‘the support allows us to pay production costs and have a symbolic amount to pay the artists.’

‘The artists are even surprised: are they going to pay me to exhibit? (laughs). It's not customary to pay the people who make things happen. Basically, the money is to pay people - but we are not dependent on support to put on an exhibition programme,’ stresses the teacher and artist, who also restores furniture.

Nuno highlights the club's ‘informal side,’ in the sense that no grades are given, ‘despite the fact that the work is critiqued.’ For Nuno, this is a space for pedagogical research: ‘We brought here the knowledge we acquired as teachers at various universities. What we do is both a summary and a critique of those programmes.’

This position is also a reaction to a competitive and individualistic model that is very present in the artistic milieu. ‘There is pressure for everyone to follow their own path alone, to isolate themselves and compete with others for the same things,’ he observes. ‘Our reaction has always been the opposite: the greater the pressure, the more we have come together.’

The Drawing Club thus asserts itself as a meeting point between peers. “It is very difficult to maintain energy and discipline when working in isolation, with family life and academic work,” says Nuno, emphasising that his exhibition A Máquina Zero, which was on display until the end of February, “only happened because it was in this context.” “It is a struggle, it is resistance.”