Media Dance Plus

The project had three main objectives. First of all, helping students and teachers in developing soft skills on the theme of relation on a triple level: self-knowledge, know others, and know the ...

The project had three main objectives. First of all, helping students and teachers in developing soft skills on the theme of relation on a triple level: self-knowledge, know others, and know the group. It aimed to develop the listening and the expression skill, not only through verbal language, but also performing language. Moreover, since it was involved in the Civic Education programme of the schools, the focus was also on the theme of citizenship, to raise a more conscious and politically active citizen. In the second place, the project had the objective to develop knowledge though the creative experimentation of languages, to stimulate the interdisciplinary dimension, a critical and proactive eye, and a consideration on challenges of modern times. Eventually, it was aimed to trace new tools and style of educational innovation to incorporate in the traditional methodology, to offer new educational approaches with which wondering on current events.

The first activity included a meeting among the partners to configure the work and to create a deeper synergy. At the same time, we started producing an asynchronous training path for teachers interested to the innovative methodology of Media Dance. The second phase was a proper experimentation, in which the selected artists worked in the two schools to investigate compelling current themes with teachers and students, in accordance with their own sensibility and path of research. The following research action took shape in a publication written by Università Milano Bicocca, based on data and materials we collected. The fourth phase had the aim to disseminate the project, spreading Media Dance practices on a local, national and international scale, sharing with the stakeholders the results of the experimentation in both the countries. Finally, there was a fifth phase which crossed the entire project, about the management and the communication of activities, aimed to narrate and document the experience. The entire Media Dance experience is narrated on the official website: https://www.mediadanceplus.eu/.

The students and the teachers have been involved in a 45-hour workshop each, in the two countries, analysing two themes related to the paths of research of each artist: the theme of power was developed in Italy by Salvo Lombardo, whereas in France by Valeria Giuga and Anne-James Chaton. Teachers experimented and identified approaches and tools of educational innovation through a shared cross-sectional reflection between teachers and students, mediated and assisted by the artists and the cultural operators. This work bought to the develop of a research and analysis by Università Milano Bicocca on the innovative elements emerged from the experimentation. https://series.francoangeli.it/index.php/oa/catalog/book/907. At the end, a dissemination event took place in each country to open the reflection also to external teachers who were interested in the reasearch process.