What?
‘Shake your Class- Schools in motion’ seeks to promote the critical understanding of young people in the face of the migration phenomenon and the right to asylum, in relation to the notable migration influx which, ever since the Arab Springs, has had a huge impact in Europe on public opinion and beliefs. The project takes into account the change that society and the Italian schools are experiencing and looks to transform this change into a means of inspiring opportunities for creativity.
How?
Seeking to consider diversity and migration as sources of reflection, curiosity and open-mindedness, the project aims to set up a national collaborative network between the Africa e Mediterraneo association and 13 schools in 6 Italian regions (Emilia Romagna, Piedmont, Trentino Alto-Adige, Lazio, Sicily and Sardinia).
The projects will take place during the academic year 2016-2017 and foresees, in its first phase, to create a teaching toolkit on the issue of migration and asylum, for use in workshop classes. In its second phase, the project seeks to involve students from middle and high schools in workshops which will conclude in the creation of comics and murals on the topics of migration and asylum. The workshop on comics and wall-art will lasts 12 hours for each class and involve students in an interactive methodology using media education. The work is participatory and carried out as much as possible with the children through games which make them relfect – while also providing, where possible, the testimony of refugees and asylum-seekers housed in the regions’ reception centres – and then through the scripting and drawing of comics strip or the creation of a mural, depending on the facilities available at each school.
Each workshop is taught by an intercultural worker and a comics artist or street artist. In each school, the course is carried out in the form of six 2-hour meetings. The first 3 meetings are led exclusively by the intercultural worker and are aimed at studying mainly the theory behind the reality of migration and asylum. Thanks to the use of the teaching toolkit, the students collectively discuss the migrant phenomenon, from a historical and global perspective and thus tackle the issues of the right to asylum and what it means to be an international asylum seeker in Italy today. The three following sessions are led both by the intercultural worker and the artist, the latter of whom shadows the students as they seek to create comics and the collective piece of wall art. For those schools interested in the wall-art workshop, in line with the school’s management team, the best place to create this piece of artwork on the school’s grounds is chosen. The project seeks to create this art work on a “forgotten” or aesthetically unpleasant wall in a way that brings together the intercultural work with the act of taking care of and protecting a public space; the school. The students thus become involved in a journey which sees them both learn about different cultures and value their school and its buildings.
The project was carried out with the financial support of Otto per Mille della Chiesa Valdese
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