The way the line weaves through the embroidery cloth… The way the body is urged to move with the stroke of a brush through a canvas… The feeling that lies beneath each combination of colors… The magic of creating a drawing in a blank piece of paper, trace by trace… The wonder, the poetry, the creativity.
Everything in the process of creating art has the potential to broaden and deepen our experience as human beings, be it in how we relate to the world and other people around us or how we interact with our own ideas, emotions and history.
That is why Art is such an important pillar across our entire educational program, from Early Childhood Education to Elementary School.
Since we live in a society that still places the highest value on logical and scientific thinking, the artistic experience in the school environment progressively lost strength, to the point of becoming elective or even completely abolished in high school – closing many of the different doors through which young people can experience the world.
“At be.Living, the school is a privileged setting for child development across several different paths, perspectives and dialogs. And art plays a key role in this fundamental and intricate construction of each individual, giving children more opportunities and knowledge to critically and constructively absorb the world around them,” said Claudia Mariuzzo, our art consultant.
According to Claudia, both in Early Childhood and Elementary School, art is approached as a language used to dive deep into the acts of “exploring”, “experimenting” and “appreciating”, based on each age group. From Orange to Year 5, learning focuses on hands-on activities, free expression and the importance of a meaningful process. In Elementary School, specifically, children develop their technical understanding of each material, always fostering each child’s unique expressiveness.
According to Priscila Menegasso, the teacher responsible for sharing the knowledge of Arts with the boys and girls in Elementary School, the technical procedure is introduced in a way that allows children to independently conduct their investigative and personal processes, without establishing absolute laws on techniques and restricting the paths of unbound creativity. At the same time, her job is to introduce the natural laws of each material in order to empower children when using them, negotiating their use or even to subvert them. “In a broader sense, we’re preparing children for life, which is no different than art itself,” said the teacher. “We present the different possibilities in an open manner and always welcoming dialog. Some have more limits and, in order to reach a certain result, we have to deal with the materiality of the rules presented to us. If we expand to a broader sense, this is a situation that could easily happen in a person’s life,” she added.
There is also a concern for linking the ideas that are being worked in the Art Studio with the topics that are being developed by other areas of knowledge. “It is important for the child to understand that in our Art space we are developing another way to relate to the same things. This will really provide added benefits because the child will understand, even if unconsciously, that he can access the world in different ways.”
Priscilla also emphasizes the importance of playing during this learning process: “The child’s body is extremely playful. They can teach us how to make the process of making art an expression of pleasure, and to promote cognitive, bodily and sensory-motor development in a way that is similar to play.”
Finally, the teacher reminds us about the dimension of art and how it can profoundly provoke the human being. “This ability to be moved by the world, to think of a poetic meaning for something, can be welcoming, provocative, contemplative, questioning… And that thing that happens when we see a space filled with a certain material and feel overwhelmed… Something happens in our very being that makes us very sensitive.”
