How Can Art Improve Your Kids’ Life?
“Art is continuous research, assimilation of past experiences, adding new experiences, form, content, matter, technique, and means.” -Bruno Munari
Childhood is when all our sensory receptors are more sensitive to the stimuli that the environment offers us. We look at everything, and we are always looking for something new that makes us wonder and amazed. We are more sensitive to beauty. But how do you preserve this sensitivity without the frenetic pace of everyday life, the monotony, the supremacy of rationality that makes us lose the taste of observation and attention to details?
The art of small things
When it comes to art, masterpieces in museums usually come to mind. Art is something more: It is everywhere, in small things. You need to know how to look good by using all your sensory receptors. But to do this, we should keep our senses trained, and for this reason, we think that education in the image and aesthetic sense is significant for the growth and learning of all individuals.
Learning to observe from an early age helps us to maintain that innate sensitivity. We believe that education for beauty, art, and image is essential. By studying the great artists’ works, we ensure that children learn history and culture and observe what is behind every masterpiece; It is therefore about grasping its artistic meaning.
For this, we are fighting for a new school with innovative projects that are sensitive to observation, experience, and attention to detail. We favor a pedagogical approach that puts creativity at the center so that children can follow their emotions, instinct, and sensitivity. Like the Ateliers Schools that prefer experimentation and pedagogy, children can creatively experiment with their ideas and curiosity.
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We want a school to arouse wonder, amazement, and curiosity, a school that transforms individuals from passive spectators of reality to watchful observers.
Art is an excellent means to teach our children and us to look at things with attention and different perspectives; it arouses in us the aesthetic pleasure, that is, that “subjective feeling that shakes us, makes us feel alive, makes us move and feel good.”
In short, Art improves our life.
We want to invite you to reflect on an image taken from a great man and a great artist: Bruno Munari.
Munari fought for the importance of art in the growth of children. He fervently supported creativity, experimentation, multi-sensoriality, knowledge, fun, and play. In one of his books, “Da cosa nasce cosa” (One thing leads to another), he draws a man without a nose and ears, possibly because he thinks that man no longer cares about smells, sounds other sensations. We do not let this be the man of the future.
Let’s educate on sensitivity and art. Let’s keep our sensory receptors alert and vigilant throughout our lives.
READ ALSO: Educating children to Beauty
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Letizia Grasso, Educationalist
“All grown-ups were children, but few of them remember it” This phrase is engraved on my heart. The child who marvels at small things is always with me. I firmly believe that the school should focus on the self-construction of knowledge through direct contact with the outside world and, therefore, through life experiences. A school open to life and from life itself learns. A school that teaches to observe every little thing, to wonder, and to ask questions. A school that forms adults who know how to reflect and put into a relationship the mind and heart.