If it is true that "nothing is worse than wasted talent" we can say that the Golinelli Foundation puts in place all the best tools to prevent this from happening. At least to the children who are lucky enough to attend his "School of ideas", a project for children between 18 months and 13 years, which integrates the normal school curriculum and which, from 3 October, will find a home in the Opificio, an industrial area abandoned and reinvented (thanks to an investment of 12 million euros), where the Foundation is transferring all its activities.
In that context, the School will have an exhibition space for theatre, music and culture, a large open green area, classrooms and laboratories, from which you exit with a large slide, to enhance investigative and scientific skills of children and teenagers, enhancing the creative approach, to discover themselves and their surroundings. “In this way – says the director general of the Antonio Danieli Foundation – we want to educate the little ones to knowledge. If you 'learn to learn' at the right age your thirst for learning will last a lifetime”. To explain the philosophy that inspires the project, we need to start from some data: “Just think – continues Danieli – that 17% of Italian students drop out of school before graduating. Among those who overcome this obstacle, 3 out of 10 enroll in university, but only 45% graduate. Therefore, in the 25-35 year-old range we have 22 graduates out of a hundred and in the 15-24 year-old range, still in school, 40% of unemployment. It's not a nice youth identity card for Italy, but evil above all needs preventive treatment, because the problem comes from childhood”.
The Foundation's approach is, by its nature, scientific: “Neurosciences – observes Danieli – bear witness to how high the neuronal elasticity of the little ones is, it is at that moment that we need to begin to feed their minds. In childhood there is the peak of creativity, but between the ages of 18 and 21 the cerebral cortex is completed and then it is a slow and long decline. We help children in the golden age. It is the proposal of a different point of view on welfare, not only socio-medical and welfare, but preventive". To put these premises into practice, the School has proposals calibrated for the different age groups. For the little ones, sensory experimentation is, of course, more important. The 2015 programs of the children of the nursery are exemplary in the titles: they range from "Ice ice I'm so cold" to "Chemistry of sweets" to "Magie del latte". The Corporea Mente project, curated by the teacher Paola Manuzzi, helps the little ones to perceive "their own bodily boundaries, put their skills to the test, feel accompanied in the acquisition of knowledge through trial and error". Touching, verifying, smelling, tasting, falling and getting up again: in this context, children can be children and experience knowledge as a game of which they are a part.
“Our society – observes Danieli – is protective, sometimes, in the wrong way. Paradoxically, we cannot line the trees with foam rubber for fear that our children will bump into them, we must let them explore, supervising and orienting themselves". When you get older, the proposals remain interesting and equally playful, even when it comes to serious things. Museums are visited, worlds are discovered and the many opportunities that Bologna offers to those with time and curiosity: from the tower where astronomers have watched the stars for over 200 years, to the unit of measurement of real tagliatelle, preserved in Palazzo della Mercanzia and corresponding exactly to the 12,270th part of the Asinelli Tower. Numerous possibilities for schools, with artists who approach music (including the Opera), spaces, colors, in a marriage of art and science, dear to the Foundation, as to its creator, the pharmacist Marino Golinelli, founder of the Alfa Wassermann, melomaniac and art collector.
The School of ideas can be accessed with teachers, but also to celebrate birthdays with friends by learning something. The activities are paid for "but the ratio between external contribution and contribution from the Foundation - specifies Danieli - is 20 to 80". The numbers testify to the success of the project: one hundred thousand participants in the various initiatives to date, 30 thousand in 2014,140 alone, 12 interactive activities organized in 2012 thematic areas. The website www.lascuoladelleidee.it writes with just pride: “La Scuola delle idee has entered the short list of finalists – the only Italian candidate – for the Children's Museum Award XNUMX, organized by the European Museum Academy and Hands On! International, which recognizes excellence in the specific sector of children's museums”.
