Prato Comunità Educante, the great pact for young people wanted by the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, is consolidated with an increasingly strong network action to promote positive actions that prevent hardship and school dropout. The project, which from this year sees the significant collaboration of Intesa Sanpaolo, in 2023-24 involved over 1500 girls and boys and more than thirty subjects including schools, cultural institutions, public and private bodies.
The results were presented this morning by the president of the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, Diana Toccafondi with the intervention of Andrea Forghieri, Intesa Sanpaolo head of social affairs. To illustrate the activities carried out, Simona di Rubba of the Cieli Aperti association and Simone Natali of the Cooperativa Pane& Rose, coordinators of the project, highlighted “the strength of the initiative that comes from continuity, from the work done all together, from the meeting between different experiences”.
Prato Educating Community has produced an unprecedented collective mobilization, characterized by the synergy between public and private actors in the social sector. “This project, in which the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation believes with conviction, has truly become a profound and shared experience of – he highlighted Diana Toccafondi – I thank all those who, with passion, are working online with results so significant that they make us proud. I wish we could all be gods together wonderers, a beautiful term recently used by Alessandro D’Avenia, capable of training our girls and boys in wonder, because knowledge comes from amazement and not from fear, from love and from liberating educational bonds that give confidence, producing courage and curiosity. For this reason the Foundation will continue to be committed to Prato Comunità Educante”.
“We have decided to collaborate again with the Cassa di Risparmio di Prato Foundation, deeply rooted in the fabric of the community – he declared Andrea Forghierihead of Intesa Sanpaolo for Social Affairs – in a logic of co-planning initiatives for young people, to promote their training and improve their conditions of access to the world of work”,
Helping secondary school children grow educationally and culturally by listening to their questions and looking for the answers right there educational community. This is the mission of the project, focused on overcoming barriers between different disciplines and on the interaction between the arts, theatre, music, sciences and physical activity.
The list of protagonists testifies to the value of the network. The project involves the institutes Curzio Malaparte, Marco Polo, Paolo Dagomari, Cicognini – Rodari, Livi – Brunelleschi, Tullio Buzzi, Francesco Datini, Copernico, Marconi, Gramsci-Keynes, Don Milani, Gandhi and Pacetti. And then again the Municipality of Prato with the Palazzo Pretorio Museum, the Foundation for contemporary arts in Tuscany, the Metastasio Theater Foundation, the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato, the Parsec Foundation – Park of Sciences and Culture, the Museum of Tessuto, the youth sports training centre, the Alambicchi social cooperative, the Polis associations, the Leonardo School of Art, ADA Prato onlus, Insieme per la famiglia and the school office.
The experiences
The work was done on numerous fronts: from cooperative language learning to the conscious use of social media (with a masterclass to allow teachers to become informed guides of the digital ecosystem): from theater workshops to enhance self-awareness and the aptitude for meeting others to reflect on the values of sport, Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. Activities were carried out to “motivate” study and recover skills by working on individual paths, a series of meetings in schools to learn how to manage “crises as opportunities” and also experiential artistic workshops to learn to share emotions .
Events to “give back” to the community
Prato Educational Community it also characterizes us for a series of “giving back” events to the community which conclude some activity paths.
A very small one Revolution (tomorrow Saturday 18 May – From 10am Centro Pecci, Textile Museum, Museum of Palazzo Pretorio – Final event at 5.30pm at Centro Pecci). Training course on which the educational sections of the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, the Textile Museum, and Palazzo Pretorio worked together with the artist Cristina Pancini. The protagonists are girls and boys from the Curzio Malaparte, Ser Lapo Mazzei, Umberto Brunelleschi artistic high schools and the Cicognini-Rodari institute. Tomorrow, on International Museum Day, all the kids involved, alternating in the three museums, will be protagonists of artistic actions and performances that they will also share with the public.
Codes of life: how I decipher the world for you with the science of everyday life (Sunday 19 May, 3.30 pm, Museum of Planetary Sciences). The Italian Museum of Planetary Sciences worked on the project together with the Leonardo School of Art in Prato with students from the Cicognini-Rodari, Livi, Brunelleschi and Pacetti institutes. The students themselves will welcome visitors and accompany them in the laboratory activities Experiment with Galileo.
DON’T LET ME DOWN! Protect me from any abandonmentor (Sunday 26 May, 6pm, Teatro Metastasio). The workshop conducted by Angela Antonini is a real theatrical training course aimed at children aged 14 and over, promoted by the Metastasio Theater Foundation.
We and the world (Wednesday 29 May, 3pm – Pacetti Institute). Open lesson in which girls and boys from the Pacetti Institute talk about each other and present the path taken during the workshop organized by the Cieli Aperti Association. With theater games and poetry readings we move from self-knowledge to encounters with others.
Syringe-Trial of humanity (Thursday 30 May, 9pm, Garibaldi/Milleventi). A reading of the cases that have marked humanity in search of a sense of justice. Scenic action by the Copernico students who followed the workshop of the actor and director Stefano Luci.
ArteXgrow (Monday 3 June – Marco Polo Institute). Students of eight different nationalities participated in a workshop on the theme “I, myself and others”. Artistic-expressive, reflection and active exchange activities were carried out. Three “class manuals” have been produced to be adopted in the next school year and multimedia materials. The intervention was conducted by Cooperativa Alambicchi, Leonardo and Ada Art School Association.
Choirs in the cloister (Wednesday 5 June, 6.30 pm, Cloister of San Domenico). Review of school choirs which concludes the activity on which the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato worked with the training involvement of teachers who were presented with the most appropriate strategies for involving children and adolescents in choral practice. The final concerts have already taken place on May 9th and 10th Sinfonietta Prato with a program dedicated to the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death.
