Urban Sketchers is the first project of the Eteris For Association born within the Eteris Center which has been operating in the field of developmental age and learning for years. The Association was born from the desire to create opportunities for aggregation and growth between people of all ages while maintaining the focus on young people, whose normal relational needs increasingly find obstacles and frequently result in the use of surrogates for the actual meeting (virtual reality first and foremost).
Eteris For believes “strongly in the importance of intergenerational meeting, in the valorization of our social reality and in the power of “closeness” and “mixing” of talents, passions, experiences based on common values of growth and mutual enrichment. For this reason Eteris For wants to promote events and initiatives oriented towards meeting, in informal contexts, which help people to get to know each other, share, discuss: light and engaging moments that leave room for the spontaneity of the relationship and creativity.”
The Urban Sketchers project, already active in dozens of cities around the world, “it responds to the desire to immerse oneself in the surrounding reality in a simple way, to return to inhabiting places with sensitivity and attention and through genuine materials such as paper and pencil to give shape to the emotions and moods that arise from them, so as to look and observe oneself ourselves, “pamper yourself” and regenerate but also share your personal gaze through images and words. This way of being together helps people to look again with depth and amazement at the beauty that surrounds them, to go and find it with curiosity in the corners of their own city, in their own territory, most of the time crossed absently, and to do all this in a group . We thus become more attentive and sensitive, we hope, to the collective heritage, be it natural or artistic-cultural and eager to enhance it, to narrate it, to take care of it.”
Meeting therefore, careful and sensitive search for beauty, drawing: “These are the ingredients that together create a break in the frenzy of everyday life, providing well-being and calm. There are many studies that have highlighted the benefits of drawing and painting on paper. Drawing helps to reduce psycho-physical tension, calms the nervous system, regulates the heartbeat, creates a relationship between the inner world of emotions and thoughts of the individual and the external world, in a space, that of the paper, in which to pour new views and awareness that stimulate creative abilities with a positive impact on the person’s general state of balance.”
The Urban Sketchers project is the result of the meeting between Laura Zavalloni, illustrator and creative director of the Cambiamenti.net agency, and Angela Padovani, coordinator of the Eteris center specialized in developmental age. Angela and Laura then involved Maurizio Melandri, an engineer for the environment and the territory, a profound expert on his land and involved in awareness-raising projects with various associations, and Maria Madeo, an art therapist, committed to promoting growth processes in the psycho-pedagogical field through paths that use the specific tools of art.
The Urban Sketchers project is sponsored by the Municipality of Faenza. The next appointment will be hosted by the Manfrediana Library in Faenza on June 20th at 6.30 pm. Information on subsequent appointments on the Instagram social channel: urbansketchersfaenza.
