An installation in Lerici projects giant drawings of children onto the main square

The main square of a town entirely plastered with blow-ups of children’s drawings. It will happen in Lerici, on September 19, on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, when the beautiful Ligurian seaside village on the Gulf of Poets will present an unprecedented work whose protagonists of the present and future are precisely the youngest children. It is a project by Marco Nereo Rotelli, who, reading the book La Piccola Guida del Mondo per Bambini by Simona Paravani (an internationally acclaimed manager as well as author and university professor), conceived a spectacular scenario, the town “dressed” with children’s drawings. Rotelli, after collecting small works from schools in Lerici, together with Antonio Giannelli, curator of the Colors for Peace project under the patronage of the “Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Italia” association, will elaborate an installation in Piazza Garibaldi, which will be on public display from Thursday, Sept. 19.

The projection of an immense dynamic collage will make children the protagonists, transforming the square into an immense drawing of light with the aim of helping us adults to look at the world with the eyes of purity, with a fresh mind, with a new look. The project, carried out under the patronage of I Parchi Letterari Italiani, was also desired by Lerici Mayor Leonardo Paoletti and immediately welcomed by elementary school teachers and principals. It is a work not dedicated to children but created by children. “In a selfish world that generates fewer and fewer children,” says the mayor, “we need their innocence and imagination, I would say their magic, to open a positive vision of the future!”

“Looking at children’s drawings I learn”: this is the source of inspiration for Marco Nereo Rotelli, who in the course of his research on poetry in visual form has repeatedly turned to children’s poetry. Simona Paravani, an internationally renowned finance manager, professor at Cambridge University, but in this capacity author of the book The Little World Guide for Children, artist Marco Nereo Rotelli and Antonio Giannelli have collaborated to create a new work, in content and form, investing in the creative method of children. What prompted a manager who lives abroad and is involved in finance to write a book that features children? “Dreams can always come true and are crucial to improving the world,” the author explains. “To tackle the world’s grand challenges, we need visionaries and visionaries who can turn challenges into opportunities!”

"As adults, we tend to lose the ability to dream ’beyond the limits’ that children have; we adults sometimes experience reality as a ballast that limits us in thinking outside the box, which children do; in short, children can help us free our minds from too many patterns and preconceptions and help us “dream” free which is essential for innovation with a capital I."

“I have been very fortunate through my career both in finance and working with NGOs and at the University where I had the opportunity to travel and meet dreamers who help change the world every day,” Paravani says. “With the book, I wanted to pass on to little boys and girls that spark of magic and optimism that I found from meeting these people, in the hope that it will give them the strength to continue dreaming even as adults. And what better place than Lerici? The beauty of its colors, sea, hills, the magic of its castle catapults us to distant times ... all of which is synonymous with dreams and thus the ideal combination for a book that exhorts us to dream.”

Antonio Giannelli, President of the “Colors for Peace” Association for the “Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Italia” together with the teachers of the schools in Lerici read Simona’s stories to each class and then urged them to draw what they feel. The Association promotes Peace through cultural interchange among the younger generations and has identified children’s drawings as the most genuine expression to raise a cry of hope from all over the World.

An installation in Lerici projects giant drawings of children onto the main square

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