Arbos has always been involved in the world of education and childhood, and so was pleased to collaborate with the Rosso di Marte association (http://www.rossodimarte.it/joomla/). This enterprise is managed by two art historians, Selena Favotto and Daniela Giordani, and organises workshops in schools. This time it was the turn of the Don Orione Elementary School in Stra (Province of Venice), and more specifically the thirty young artists in the two sections of Class 5.
The subject chosen for these workshops was water. The workshops have just concluded, after running for a few months.
The Rosso di Marte association extended an invitation to the Brazilian illustrator, Maria Mariano (https://mariamariano.wordpress.com/), a specialist in the world of childhood who has collaborated with Arbos for some time.
Maria Mariano put forward the idea of getting every child to make their own “artist’s book”. Each child was able to produce his own work of art and become a little artist. Maria recognised that the youngsters had the imagination to create a sea made of paper, a sea within a book.
Indeed, each book was entirely hand-stitched by the children and then embellished with a story.
Arbos supplied its “Cartapaglia” recycled paper for these workshops and Maria took it into class hidden inside a “magic box”. The opening of this box full of coloured paper aroused considerable interest and curiosity among the children, and some of them were positively gaping in surprise! The youngsters did not just enjoy the theme and methods of the workshop; some were even inspired to experiment beyond it. Indeed, one child decided to make three-dimensional pop-up books, so becoming a youthful “paper engineer”. All the children showed great creativity in their use of the paper, and enthusiasm for the expressive possibilities of the multi-coloured cartapaglia.
With help from the illustrator and their teachers, they learned that paper should always be treated with care and respect, and that recycled paper can be used to describe and illustrate many different things.
Maria Mariano is an expert at bookbinding and taught the children how to bind a book; so every pupil managed to completely hand-stitch his own “artist’s book”. This gave the youngsters immense satisfaction and when the class was over they ran to their parents, telling them excitedly how they had sewn their books together.
Maria Mariano gave Arbos her impressions of the event. She said she had been pleasantly surprised and impressed and very happy to have taken part in the workshop, where she had not only taught the children but also learned a lot from them.
The teachers were also enthusiastic about this “pilot project” and are going to extend the workshops to other classes.
But what about Arbos? Arbos is happy and proud to be able to take part in this type of event. In particular, it enjoys working with children, young talents and potentially the artists or designers of tomorrow.
