The very beginning of our project, at the end of October 2017 the Joining Hands students and teachers went to the University of Basilicata to meet the author of two books on migration, Vita and Io sono con te.
Our school has become bigger since last September. A technical and vocational school is now part of our institute, a new name "L. da Vinci - Nitti", the same headmistress.
13th October 2018 #ERASMUSDAYS
The Joining Hands students met their peers involved in other KA2 projects and then worked in groups in order to exchange information about the topics and the activities.
23rd October 2018 "One more step forward"
We met two young men from Senegal and Mali. They were so talkative and proud of being able to speak Italian after one year in our country.
Our students interacted with the guests showing capability of rejecting prejudices and respect for others' stories of poverty and persecution.
6th & 7th November 2018
We went to the theatre to see the performance "Panorama", by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club with Motus, on identity and nomadism. The six actors, belonging to New York Great Jones Repertory, claimed, through their stories, the right to break barriers.
The following morning there was a talk with the actors and the directors. Thus we listened to another original point of view on identity and the concept of belonging.
9th November 2018
A writer, Giuseppe Lupo, came to our school and there was a dialogue between the Joining Hands students and him on past and present migrations.
A great opportunity to disseminate our project activities!
On 18th December we celebrated the International Migrants Day by inviting the first year students to listen to a presentation of our project topic and then do the workshop "No human being is illegal".
Our students were involved in a drama workshop for three months. They learnt to collaborate, show emotions, choose a role, use their voices and body language in order to create a performance capable of making the audience think about migration and migrants. We involved a class of 16-year-olds in the workshop because it was a way to increase the number of students dealing with migration. By having more participants in the activity we also had more parents at the performance thus making the impact on the school community more significant.
In February 2019 the Joining Hands students took part in the workshop "Woundscapes" coordinated by two teachers of Art History and Philosophy. First they analysed paintings by Michelangelo, Raffaello, Bernini, Géricault and Banksy. Then there was a debate on the vocabulary and feelings connected with migration such as homo viator, asylum seeker, refugee. Finally, the students were told to alter the reproductions of paintings using a bottle of white paint in order to convey different feelings such as empathy, hope, the loss of identity or the sense of belonging.
On 16th February we watched a UNICEF documentary "SottoPelle" on the stories of some asylum seekers and then there was a debate. When we arranged for the UNICEF documentary to be shown in our school, we invited more than 100 students ( participants in other Erasmus+ KA2 projects and the class involved in the drama workshop) and 10 teachers to watch the documentary with us and take part in the following talk.
Our students gave the theatrical performance "Speranze di carta" in front of the school community in April 2019. They performed it again on 18th May 2019, Arts Day. This time the venue was the oldest theatre in town, the Teatro Stabile.
During the drama workshop we also decided to shoot a video which was to convey our reflections, empathy and our commitment to the project topic.
In April we were happy to welcome our partners for the last LTTA. Here is the video of the first day at IIS L. da Vinci-Nitti with the arrival of 22 students, 7 teachers and the headmaster of the Portuguese school.
Hard work, activities and contacts bring about new opportunities for keeping talking about migration.
Joining Hands students co-operated with the regional committee “Lucani nel mondo” in the course of the project first year. Now they have been invited to take part in the “Festival delle spartenze” in Calabria from 31 July to 4 August 2019. They are going to meet young people from other regions and focus on problems connected with migration.
PICCOLO FESTIVAL DELLE SPARTENZE .pdf