Art as a universal language for inclusion since childhood: ArtsTogether curriculum is ready!

May 15, 2019News

Art experiences engage children in authentic learning, with the opportunity to play, explore, experiment and use their imaginations to express and communicate their ideas. Children find their own voice by transforming materials to express themselves and make meaning.

The creative environment is a key factor in ensuring children are offered a potentiating and enabling space to make art alongside others, with materials that offer the capability to discover ideas in different ways. Children can explore diverse visual and creative inquiries (individually and together) alongside adults who care and give quality attention, engaging in genuine dialogue with children about their ideas and experiences.

Arts Together promotes an inclusive pedagogy that aims to engage all participants in learning in and through the arts, and specifically supports the integration of migrant children and their families. Emphasis is placed on creative intercultural engagement across the school community.

The resources used in the curriculum have been carefully chosen to reflect, explore and celebrate the theme ‘Our Stories, Our Communities’ across a wide range of cultural contexts. Learning activities encourage migrant children, in conjunction with children and young people from host communities, to reflect on their own specific cultural contexts and to share common and contrasting experiences.

At the same time, Arts Together materials, resources and suggested activities are intended to promote curiosity and empathy in relation to the cultural contexts of others. This intercultural understanding is further enhanced through a focus on universal themes such as the journeys of species; global stories exploring personal, social and cultural identity; the environments we share; the seasonal celebrations and festivals which illuminate and enrich our annual calendars.

Last week, on the 8th and 9th of May 2019, Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci hosted the partners of the project ArtsTogether – Integrating Migrant Children at Schools through Artistic Expression, co-funded by the AMIF programme of the European Union, to define and launch the testing phase of the artistic curriculum for the inclusion of migrant children.

In the next scholar year, Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci will involve pre-primary schools teachers to participate in training and workshops in order to get familiar with the curriculum and apply it with the children, and also to engage them in intercultural activities through arts.

If you want to know more about the project or get involved in the next phase, write an e-mail to antonella.alessi@danilodolci.org