Progetti didattici
How to teach contemporary art to children?
There is no way to teach contemporary art to children, because they already know everything! A child can cook using leaves, sticks and stones, he takes care of a small cut with a basin; he goes to sleep with a dinosaur that will defend him from monsters or he plays mother cradling a baby doll. This magical thought – say the pedagogues – is the exceptional cognitive device that children have at their disposal to be able to live in a world that is too different, too big, too incomprehensible for them (Daniele Novara, Organized and happy, BUR).
The exercise of the imagination belongs to children and is methodically cultivated by artists. What we adults can do is teach them to make the best use of the tools in order to interpret the world around them; push them to ask questions without fearing that these will be left without answers; show them diversity and complexity so that they can work out the connections needed to understand what they are looking at.
Contemporary art has the ability to offer children an incredible amount of input free from superstructures, therefore, it can only be taught through experience
