The international, pedagogic, travelling, intercultural project
Introduction
The plastic infant exhibition ´A World Painted with Peace´ is the first stage of an international, pedagogic, traveling, intercultural project named ´Children for the World´. It attempts to treat different subjects related to cooperation, solidarity, and scope of education by values while developing and improving children self-expression through artistic creations, such as painting, music, theatre, literature, etc.
Partial results
* At the moment, the exhibition is made up with 66 paintings of A4 size paper. Each of them has a caption.
* Eleven countries have already participated, as well as 290 schools, 575 teachers, and 55.500 students between 2001 and 2004.
* Pedagogical and economic report of each country member is elaborated by the coordinator of the country with photos and a visual memory of posters, invitation cards, and advertising spots on newspapers.
* Audio-visual CDs, is it to say, visual audios created by Spanish and Dominican children. Besides, it includes photos of the participants, specifications made by the coordinators, supervisors of the institutions, specifications about the collaborators of the project i.e. personal details, etc.
Definition
The current experience corresponds to the first stage of this project, which is named ´A World Painted with Peace’. The handled subject is peace and the means of expression used are paintings elaborated by children age between 6 and 13 years old. Through these drawings, the participants have been able to shape their vision of the peace value.
This exhibition is expected to travel to the five continents. It was designed to gather works gradually. So, each country shows not only its drawings but also the drawings of the countries that preceded it. As a consequence, it means that the exhibition becomes more and more extended: For this reason, nowadays, it compiles 66 paintings belonging to 11 countries that have participated at it.
The process starts in the classroom. The teacher motivates the pupil to express freely how he or she understands peace. Each drawing is accompanied by an enclosed legend where the boy or the girl explains the manner in which he or she has expressed peace in the drawing. He or she explains it to the adults. That is why the latter are not those who interpret the plastic universe of children but the children who give their own interpretations of it. Moreover, it tries to collect the diversity of each country including its different features: urbanism, countryside, and indigenous or young groups with varied abilities.
The project began in Tangier, Morocco, in June 2000, moved after to Mexico, and came to Spain in January 2002. In the last country told, the General Coordination of the program was settled in the Latin American Classroom of The House of America (Casa de América, name of the building in Spanish) till May 2003 and Bienvenida Sánchez Alba was the General Coordinator of the program. Then, it shifted to the 8 above-mentioned countries. Afterwards, it returned to Colombia, Mexico, and it came back to Morocco on May 2004.
Beneficiaries: Children of the entire world, participants, teachers, as well as all the communities and countries that could appreciate the value and enjoy the exhibitions. Adults were also thanked for participating with their support and motivation. Apart, diplomatic representatives and mass media of each country became involved in the project.
Main Targets
* To study and value how peace is conceived and shown according to different educational systems of different cultures, countries as well as gender and age of participants in order to promote peace education through knowledge, understanding, and respect of the difference between the nations.
*To create a space of cooperation between children and teaching staff of the own country and among the children and the teaching teams of the five continents.
*To promote the education for peace through the plastic expression and the emotional education.
*To attract the greatest number of countries possible in order to achieve diversity and obtain larger diffusion.
Activities
* Contact with countries and invitate them to participate in the exhibition.
* The participation of children in this project is crucial. Since it is a project based on contact, their presence is fundamental. In each country, it is developed in a different way according to educational means and culture.
* Contact with the embassies of the participant countries to have a representative during the inaugural act and to attain the presence, if possible, of other embassies to promote the Project.
* To get mass media participation to cover the event.
Workshops
In most of the exhibitions, the presentations had an interactive participation and an important infant population as well. They participated by accomplishing the painting, or through musical shows, bodily expression, putty painting, etc.
International videoconferences were organised during the inauguration days in order to enable and encourage contact among the children of the different countries. Furthermore, there were videoconferences in which different countries participated at the same time, for instance: Spain-Mexico, Peru-Mexico, Dominican Republic-Spain, Spain-Mexico, Peru-Colombia and Dominican Republic.
World painted with peace is a creation of four teachers: Gloria María Abarca Obregón (Mexico), Bienvenida Sánchez alba (Spain), Verónica Baltazar Ruiz (Mexico) and Said Bahajin (Morocco). Nevertheless, the coordinators of the other 8 participant countries have worked and participated at it, too. They have shown great professionalism by means of contributing to the project with many positive ideas. The name of all of them appears in chronological order of organisation as follows:
Patricia Dioses (Peru); María del Pilar Sánchez B. (Paraguay); Martha Elena Valencia Restrepo (Colombia); Alicia Oria (USA); Tania Ávila Palma (Guatemala), Cruz María Dotel Tejada (Dominican Republic); Marea Monserrat Euzebio Ballester (Brazil), and Cristina Isabel Valderrama Pereira (Bolivia).
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