EFFETÀ PAUL VI INSTITUTE + TERRA SANCTA COLLEGE FOR BOYS JUNE 10 – 14, 2013

TAKE THE ROAD LANDSCAPE WORKSHOP

The 2013 workshop closes our activities about environmental education started three years ago, supported by AVSI at Effetà Paolo VI Institute and later at Terra Sancta College of Bethlehem. We have understood together how the environmental issue cannot be reduced to an ecological behaviour and its traditional rules: ‘environment’ is all reality around us and – at the same time – education of a new, aware gaze on it.

We are convinced that what can really mark the construction of a place is the personal consciousness and desire to transform the environment in which the man lives, to make it more suitable and corresponding to his needs and expectations. Ultimately, this possibility is linked to education, which is introduction to reality and means to develop all the structures of an individual until they are complete, while at the same time affirming the possible active links those structures have to reality[1].

Our educational path was underlined and spread in the past years as a journey to a new “awareness of the gaze”: the goal was not only to see, but also to carefully observe and look for a meaning. We used both representation (drawings, colours…) and narration (depictions, short stories…) as useful tools to understand, re-design, describe and communicate reality around us and to share our experience with the others. This method of intervention on reality – starting from what can be found in it – involves the whole individual as part of his society, that is in the public, urban space.

With such a deep gaze everyone becomes able to imagine and design. This approach can be implemented where the individual lives, not only inside his house, his garden. He can broaden his attention and action on whole society and his everyday life. This is what we intend to do this year during our workshop. We desire to take outside the school what we have already learned together, share our experience, inform other people about it.

We think that our week together can be useful for the children in order to become more conscious of being “protagonist” – thanks to this new gaze – of the transformation of the space around them. Essentially the project is grounded on an esthetical intention, on a desire for beauty, not only on a technical need. The request of beauty unveils the subject, reveals his particular point of view, his search for meaning through experiences and relationships.

We chose a collective, urban space as field of intervention – the street – in order to involve other people during the workshop and gain consciousness through new encounters and interactions. We would try to work on the path that joins the two different schools, putting there our ideas, inside what happens everyday. The street is a very rich, versatile place. It offers small spaces in which our ideas – working in small groups – can become actions, interventions on a larger scale, that is urban space. In the beginning the children will be guided along this path to read its spaces (through observations, drawings, games…). We will help them with the choice of a particular place, object or situation as the content of their project. We could build a new piece of urban fabric, renew a special point of this “journey”… During our activities we will try to design and create a sort of urban installations, recalling what we did and discovered in the past years in a deeper way.

WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES IN BRIEF. After a short introduction the guys will be divided into small groups (7/8 people – 2 teams for Effetà and 3 for Terra Sancta College) and led along the road in a sort of “treasure hunt”, which goal is to discover and understand the location. Each group will choose a particular place as field of work and decide what to create. Inside Effetà school we will create our atelier to develop our project (create a piece of urban fabric, an installation to underline a specific point of the path, etc). On Friday our activity consists in taking what we have done into the street. We usually end our workshop with a small “event” to share the experience with other teachers and the families.

WHAT IS AVSI? AVSI is an Italian NGO based in Jerusalem. One of AVSI’s activities is supporting the educational emergency in the Palestinian Territories, improving the quality of education through an integrated intervention that provides light rehabilitation of the structures, provision of educational facilities, extracurricular activities, teachers and social workers training in the area of Bethlehem, Jericho and Jerusalem Old City.

WHAT IS BRAMA? The word (in Polish language) means ‘passage’, for us it means a passage from a traditional to a contemporary way to approach the project, as a journey, a process that makes a place no longer the same place. Brama Group was born in Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio in 2006, from an idea of Francesco Allasina, Alberto Mazzucchelli, Angelica Tortora and Paolo Vimercati, then the group has grown. Brama Group is a nomad laboratory, is a manifesto on a contemporary public space reshaping urban space. Since 2011 Brama Group has joined AVSI, organizing together some workshops about environmental education in Bethlehem. We tried a new approach to environmental issue: we tried not to reduce it to some “rules” of good behaviour but to build up a new awareness in living the spaces of our everyday life. We should encourage the children to have a new approach to nature, discovering together a beauty never seen before, we hope they could become protagonist of the space in which they live.

[1] Cfr. Luigi Giussani, Dynamics and Factors of the Educational Event in “The Risk of Education. Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny” The Crossroad Publishing Company – New York, 2001