Arte e Educação

In one of the diaries she kept during the Spring of 1995, while laying the foundations of her Children’s Theatre Experimental School, Chiara Guidi wrote: “The School had no objective, but it laid the cobblestones of a path or, metaphorically, the foundations for the construction of a Theatre.” Around that time, Chiara wanted to “put to the test what I was doing within the company” [Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio], and so she decided to approach children: “If I had them next to me, I would manage to mimic the secret they keep – the art of playing.” A whole method emerged out of this desire, a method that challenges pedagogy by proposing an experience that brings together – in a single artistic vocation – the child, the actor and the teacher/educator. The philologist and professor Roberta Ioli and the choreographer and programmer Madalena Victorino join the Italian artist in an examination of the relationships between Art and Education, as well as the power of this “reverse pedagogy” that puts the child’s gaze at its centre. Chiara states: “I was always moved by the conviction that children are unaware of themselves as such. Adults should try to forget that fact, and thus become able to recognise another way of looking at the world and organising our knowledge of it.”