ItalyResilio project

In the peripheral areas around the cities, the phenomenon of educational poverty is strong and schools are the only cultural pole. In these territories characterized by social marginality and economic fragility, families, often foreign, experience situations of social hardship. Fondazione Marcegaglia supports the Resilio project for the three-year period 2021-2023 which brings artistic workshops to primary schools designed to help children to face and process difficulties and develop creativity and self-expression.

The RESILIO project aims to combat educational poverty and is aimed at children who attend primary public schools in areas with high social marginalization, with a focus special on the reworking of children’s experiences during the period of lockdown and suspension of lessons in presence. In this difficult context, artistic language becomes a means to rethink experience, transform it and face it in its most difficult moments, acquiring greater resilience, self-expression and creativity.

The project was brought to Italy by Mus-e Italia onlus, a point of reference in the Italian territory of the Mus-e Program, an emanation of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation based in Brussels for 25 years.

The Mus-e artistic workshops aim to strengthen some transversal skills in children, essential for their future. Art, and the pedagogical method developed further twenty years of activity, they act from a cognitive point of view, with the aim of helping the child a observe and interpret reality, grasping unexpected situations without fear. The proposed activities also act from an emotional and relational point of view, encouraging creativity self-expression, stimulating the development of one’s communication skills and relationships with adults and peers.

Thanks to the contribution of the Marcegaglia Foundation, the project will be activated on a three-year basis in the Giovanni XXIII primary school, San Polo district, south-east of Brescia, a former industrial center and one of the most populous districts of the city, characterized by strong social contrasts and high poverty. and in Verona in the Busti School, Borgo Roma district, with a strong multi-ethnic presence and a significant marginalization of foreign children and families, including second generation ones. From 2022, the project also involves the Tommaso Grossi primary school which is located in a suburb of Milan and is considered a frontier with a very large number of Arab children in conditions of fragility.

The project activities will take place with workshops in the classrooms by professional artists and with some training meetings for teachers on inclusive and transversal pedagogical methodologies. There will then be moments of collective restitution in the territories involved and collaborations with the cultural associations of the territory. To encourage a broader view of children, the project will be enriched by the collaboration with the Early Childhood Development Center managed by the Marcegaglia Foundation in Rwanda.