“L’arte di essere – un viaggio nella consapevolezza” (“The Art of being – A journey into awareness”) took place within the Project Frequenza 2.00 promoted by Associazione di Promozione Sociale Patatrac and supported by WeWorld Onlus, at Snodo – Hub Cittadino of Aversa. The ultimate goal of the project Frequenza 2.00 is to promote the fight against educational poverty and early school leaving in support of lower secondary school students.
The purpose of the creative and educational workshops “L’arte di essere – un viaggio nella consapevolezza”, was to promote self-awareness and cooperation thanks to some creative tools such as art, photography, and comics.
The educational methodologies used (The methodologies were): Non-formal Education, Rational and Emotional Education (REBT- Ellis), Learning by Imitation, Cooperation and Self Efficacy (Social Learning, Modelling and Self Efficacy, Bandura), encouraging (providing for) active and experiential participation of children with moments of sharing in groups, and (for) life skills development.
During the first phase there was space for the participants to get to know each other, in order to build a relationship of trust and sharing. The purpose was to lead each participant to a greater awareness of themselves and others through creative channels.
The photography workshop allowed us to work together on the shots and the perceptions that everyone has about themselves and their peers, giving the opportunity to open up and tell anecdotes of their daily lives.
Next, was explained the creative process that drives artists to make their works that speak for themselves. The realization of the activity was preceded by a brief illustrated story of the theme of the night in art, with a specific focus on the paintings of Mirò (People in the night guided by the phosphorescent trail of snails) and Van Gogh (The starry night).
According to the size of the group and the manipulative activities, famous art works (works of art) were reproduced with everyday materials of different types (fabrics, books, photos, etc.), encouraging direct contact with the material.
The main theme of the night represented a mirror of our awareness: it is only at night that we can see the light of the stars and we realize that we are in the world; our gaze turns first to the sky and then to ourselves. This is what many artists did with their paintings. Digital and paper images, videos, and storytelling were then used. The participants were free to give their interpretation about the theme of the night, representing their own emotional world and beliefs.
The last phase involved the creation of a comic strip board. Thanks to the artist Emiddio Palazzo, a creative channel was again shown as an opportunity to reflect on issues closer to the world of adolescents and stimulating creative thinking and skills. It was proposed to the participants a practical approach of a fundamental concept: the realization of anatomical sub-structures to create characters to be inserted, subsequently, in an illustrative context of sequential narration. Creativity was stimulated thanks to the creation of characters starting from simple shapes, even irregular ones, and then continuing with technical steps, such as the creation of the outline – the main outlines of the drawings – and shading.
Learning storytelling through images facilitated the understanding and development of cognitive and communicative skills that can be used in multiple contexts, and allowed children to approach figurative art in a different way.
By creating their own work, they had the opportunity to express and build their aesthetic sense, questioning the subjective point of view to promote in an active and experiential way the creative development of self image.
