Theatre at Liceo Vittorio Veneto in Milan

An inclusive process of artistic expression for young people

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An inter-class extra-curricular workshop project, existing for several years and part of Mirmica's projects since 2019. A space of freedom, expression, inclusion, generating a participatory artistic process that allows students' voices to resonate within the school community and in the territory.

At Vittorio Veneto Scientific High School in Milan, the theater workshop is inter-class and extra-curricular, established in 2012 under the direction of Carola Maternini, becoming part of Mirmica's projects from 2019. A space of freedom, expression, inclusion, generating a participatory artistic process that allows students' voices to resonate within the school community and in the territory.

The group begins a journey aimed at creating moments of inter-class integration and with the school community, to enhance the students' expressive specificities while supporting and developing relational skills of being and working in groups. Other objectives are to investigate youth issues they care about, explore texts and performative languages that can express them, support youth leadership by encouraging participants' authorial and creative propositions. The project has grown so much over the years, becoming increasingly rooted and integrated in the institute that, in the 2018-2019 school year, the number of students participating in the workshop reached about sixty. To support work with these large numbers of enrollees, that same year Mirmica association joined in conducting the workshop, first adding Viola Ghidelli alongside Carola Maternini and then other association operators, depending on the years and the needs of the group and the journey. The group began to experiment also in creating original dramaturgies, giving life to shows that interweave texts written by students with classics, mythology, theatrical and non-theatrical works of the 1900s. The use of video is another component integrated into the work, a language that allows students to explore multiple and complex expressive planes.

The participatory work dimension in this project is particularly significant. A constant characteristic in this journey is the desire to maintain an inclusive and horizontal push in all types of processes: relational, decision-making, expressive and creative. A unique experience for the students, which they rarely get to live in other moments of their lives. The project often sees former students of the same school, or from other school workshops, supporting the conducting of workshops, experimenting with training paths in social theater and audio-video documentation.

During the Covid-19 pandemic emergency period, the course continued online to support resilience processes and complete the undertaken journey by creating 4 videos as an end-of-year project.

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