The “Piccole guide” (Little Guides) workshop project – (May 23, 2025)
On Friday, May 23, 2025, our gallery welcomed fifty young students—consisting of 22 children from class 1st C and 20 from class 1st A of the Spoltore elementary school, along with 8 children from the mixed 1st and 2nd-grade class of Caprara. This visit was part of the Piccole guide (Little Guides) workshop project, organized by the Pro Loco Spoltore Terra dei cinque borghi. Accompanied by project coordinator Roberta Rullo and their teachers, these young visitors engaged with great focus in a narrated tour exploring the differences between the antique and the modern. They were given the opportunity to physically handle both ancient and contemporary artworks—some restored and others awaiting restoration—to visually and tangibly grasp the concept of preservation and recovery.
We firmly believe that routine debates surrounding the role of art in culture, or how beauty can save humanity, must be matched by the creation of a nurturing environment where these principles can be practically introduced and sustained. This effort must begin with the youngest generations, using original and impactful approaches. As the visionary artist and designer Bruno Munari once noted: “I have held various meetings and lectures at the university level, in middle schools, in elementary schools, and now, finally, I have reached the kindergarten. That is where we must act, otherwise children are already conditioned to a distorted, closed way of thinking; they are suffocated in their creative and imaginative possibilities. Therefore, if we want to change society, it is precisely there that we must act to hope for a better world a few generations from now.”
We extend our sincere thanks to Roberta Rullo and the teaching staff for fostering exactly this kind of environment. They embody the true meaning of educators as understood in Ancient Greece—serving as the primary guides in the life of a child, a youth, and ultimately, an adult. These projects are deeply rewarding for us as well. They deserve to become permanent structural initiatives due to their vital importance, even when operating within a social framework that, unfortunately, tends to prioritize different goals.
Benedetto Vertecchi, Professor Emeritus of Experimental Pedagogy at Roma Tre University, argued that: “It is necessary to leave room for the (apparent) “waste of time,” which generates “knowledge and imagination built on experience and observation”; the creation of a “culture rich in symbolic elements” that is built through purposelessness—meaning through acquisitions that are highly unlikely to be directly applied to productive labor activities. Literature, art, history, and music are precious expressions of a purposelessness that is essential for developing the capacities not only of privileged minorities, but of the population as a whole.”
