Parma, foreign-born teens tell the Pilotta's works on social media video

The Complex of the Pilotta in Parma has initiated an interesting cultural mediation project reserved for the so-called "new Italians,“ that is, girls and boys who were born to foreign families but who are in every way Italian because they have always lived in our country, grew up here, and are native speakers of Italian. In particular, the project was aimed at children of foreign origin who live in Parma, attend the Technical Economic Institute ”G.B. Bodoni" and are trying to grow their roots here, perhaps through art.

The starting point was to try to understand what the artworks of the Pilotta can communicate to foreign-born children. For example, what a capriccio by Bellotto can convey to a boy of Nepalese descent, or Correggio’sCoronation of the Virgin to a very young person from the Arab world, or a Madonna and Child with Saints Michael the Archangel, Joseph and John the Baptist by Girolamo da Sermoneta to a teenager from a Ghanaian family background. The project was the brainchild of Professors Daniela Guerrieri and Erika Martelli of Bodoni and Simone Verde, Director of the Nuova Pilotta: both structures, Pilotta on the one hand and the School Institute on the other, worked at all levels to transform a working hypothesis into a concrete result. The museum involved its staff, entrusting art historians Carla Campanini and Maria Cristina Quagliotti with the management of the project, and the School Institute involved teachers and parents, finding the students not only willing to get involved but also to be decidedly proactive about how to manage the operation.

Operation that consisted in entrusting a group of young students of different cultural origins, European and non-European, with the task of not only studying, each of them, one of the Pilotta Gallery’s heritage works of art, but also describing it, even in the mother tongue of the family of origin, to those who, in Parma and elsewhere, still speak, and often only, that language. People who have likely never had occasion to enter the Pilotta and who know very little about Italian or European history and art, inviting them to share the same interest.

Thus, thanks also to the work of camera operator-director Giulia Serra, 15 students will illustrate as many works, selected directly by them, and they will do so not only in Italian but also, at least in part, in the language of their families of origin and with their personal background. The footage of these “encounters with opera,” included in the PCTO project “The Pilotta and the World,” will be online, available to the city’s families and language communities, first and foremost. But actually available to everyone.

“The idea came to us,” say the children with their teachers, “somewhat in reaction to the campaign proposed by the Uffizi last summer: in class we discussed whether or not it was appropriate to invent a blogger like Chiara Ferragni in an art gallery, and we talked about cultural marketing and discussed the appropriateness of applying to public cultural institutions the marketing techniques that we see used in the consumer economy, a discussion that led us, more generally, to discuss tourism and its future, including from the experience of this pandemic and the reactions that cultural institutions had had: we talked about MART producing links from the homes of researchers and experts, Teatro Carignano asking young actors from its suspended productions to present shows, libraries in the province of Reggio Emilia deciding to read a book a day from inside their premises, Teatro Farnese and its streaming concerts. We also wondered whether it might not be the case that, instead of a blogger, the witness to a work of art should rather be a student who has studied the work, visited the museum and lives not far from it. Someone, in short, for whom the artwork is a vital reference point.”

The idea, shared by the school headmaster and faculty, was also immediately embraced by Director Verde and his team, who involved the students in a series of closed-door visits to the Pilotta to prepare and make the videos, followed by two lectures by the director. In the in-depth phase, the students explain, “we also discussed this wonderful experience with our partners in one of our Erasmus projects (entrepreneurship and emotions), which deals with the enhancement of emotional aspects in training and work environments, the students recount. In a discussion on Zoom, we talked about the project with our Spanish, Polish, Serbian, French, and Romanian partners and how this model of collaboration between schools and local museums could be adapted to different realities, for which purpose we created a podcast lesson and a remote discussion.”

But giving even greater meaning to the project was the contribution of the group of teachers who deal with disabilities within Bodoni: teachers Rosa Barranca, Francesca d’Orlando, and Manuela Vico who involved some students with disabilities and the group of teachers who follow newly arrived students, also involving students who are taking their first steps in the Italian language. “We thought,” say the students, “that such a rewarding experience could motivate them to learn our language and discover its cultural strength.”

The project is destined to continue: the many insights offered by the experiences of our young “art ambassadors” in the videos already produced have stimulated the Bodoni Institute and the Pilotta to continue the collaboration so positively initiated, also involving other students to experiment with global art history interweavings and pathways in a multicultural dialogue open to the community that will be deepened starting in the fall months, during the next school year. You can see the videos already made on the social channel pages of the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta, Facebook @PilottaParma, Instagram @pilottaparma and Youtube Pilotta Parma.

Parma, foreign-born teens tell the Pilotta's works on social media video

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