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THE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION AND OVS CO-PROJECT IS NOW IN ITS 6TH YEAR AND WE’RE TALKING ABOUT SOCIAL PRACTICE WITH 1,800,000 KIDS AND ARTIST, MARINELLA SENATORE
Kids Creative Lab is synonymous with records. Now in its 6th year, the educational project jointly organised by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and OVS, dedicated to primary schools all over Italy, has reached 1,800,000 children, 66,000 classes, and 8,000 schools. Back together again this year, with participants playing a leading role in a brand-new edition that has changed formula, starting with the educational idea. We’re talking about Social Practice with our new co-project WE the KIDS, together with the artist and film-maker Marinella Senatore. There will also be another new element: a large group performance being held to close this 6th edition, scheduled to take place on 9 May at 11:00 in St Mark’s Square, Venice. Children from the participating classes will be performing a choreography all together, under the direction of Ms Senatore. This performance will be accompanied by music created especially for the project by composer and pianist Emiliano Branda.
WE the KIDS is part of the “Le Città in festa” project, a programme promoted by Venice City Council which involves the city of Venice, the islands and the mainland in a series of different events. For the performance on 9 May, we would like to thank the Associazione Piazza San Marco, which has been promoting and safeguarding the cultural heritage of St Mark’s Square for over twenty years.
After looking at different themes over the last few years, this year’s choice was aimed at taking a step further with a proposal for starting up a framework of relations and actions that could bring about social change for the communities involved. Marinella Senatore, an internationally famous artist with years of experience working on public participation projects that involve whole communities in the creation of group works, has devised a performance for WE the KIDS. This will be based on the relationships between the project’s participants and aims to promote values such as awareness and respect among the children involved. The title, WE the KIDS, takes its inspiration from “We the People”, the introductory words to the United States Constitution, and it comes from a desire to put children right at the centre of this 6th Kids Creative Lab, making them the protagonists of the artistic performance devised by Marinella Senatore. WE the KIDS might have the aim of involving pupils from Italian primary schools, but the hope is also that it will reach out to their families and local areas, involving people of different ages, origins, ethnicities and cultures to promote an inclusive society that is involved, peaceful, and cosmopolitan.
All of the classes that sign up for the project receive a teacher’s handbook with ideas for various subjects, together with a video tutorial CD. The kidscreativelab.ovs.it website provides all the educational material, as well as the video to learn the workshop exercises, designed to allow teachers to be independent as they take the children through the activities.
By accessing the reserved area “MYKCL”, teachers can upload images and videos of rehearsals and performances of each class. The material created by the participating classes will be displayed in the “Gallery” section of the website.
“I am delighted that this sixth year of working with OVS on the Kids Creative Lab project will see a step in the direction of Social Practice, contemporary art activities aimed at starting up a framework of relationships and actions that will bring about social change in the community involved”, says Karole Vail, Director of the Guggenheim Museum. “What’s more, the important participation of an internationally famous Italian artist such as Marinella Senatore makes us even prouder of the work that we have been doing together with OVS since 2012”.
"Kids Creative Lab is becoming increasingly ambitious”, says Stefano Beraldo, CEO of OVS, “This time we aren’t stopping at raising interest among kids and teachers; our aim is also to get their families involved in this great creative celebration, in accordance with the principles of inclusiveness that form the backbone of our brand values. For OVS, six years of work with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection reflect our desire to influence art education for children; they mean the ability to build a serious educational project that has become customary within schools, using the possibility that our brand has to set up a network of relations throughout Italy, through the dialogue we establish with Italian families and their needs on a daily basis. We are always in search of beauty, even when we design our collections for adults and kids, and being so near to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection enriches what we do, stimulating us to work better, proud that we can teach kids to use their hands and minds to make room for their imaginations.”
“In 2013 I set up The School of Narrative Dance, a travelling school based on a non-hierarchical form of learning, self-training and informal education”, says artist Marinella Senatore. “Kids Creative Lab is a project that I find particularly interesting, since it falls within my field of work, and I feel that it just might challenge me to look more into different teaching systems and to enter into direct contact with the school community. I hope that WE the KIDS can become an invitation to kids to express their hopes and aspirations creatively, giving them a boost to their self-respect, their passions, and also the desire to believe in their own abilities. I hope it will turn out to be a direct, shared experience of active citizenship, and one that they can all contribute to together”.
