PERSE Training Programme for Youth Workers was a real place of exchange and
peer to peer education. We experimented new tools and new approaches.
This below is the experience told by Manuela Appendino, biomedical engineer and
founder of WeWomeEngineers, an organization devoted to the empowerment of
women in the scientific field.
« PERSE project conceives and develops a pedagogical approach oriented
towards creativity, where art, science and technology can merge, overcoming the
dualism between formal and informal education.
In this experience, I adopted new work tools which improved my daily life and
learning. I was able to watch the lessons online in order to deepen the topics
addressed.
What were we doing?
Training, practical workshops, group work, experimentation, using tools and
methods to develop a project with specific objectives but above all we thought
about THE MEANING of what we were doing.
Finding a meaning or imagining it as a practice of creative thinking contributes to
define the real mission of an inclusive education.
Technology shows the possibility to realize an artistic project with different levels of
interaction and conceptual as well as cultural implications.
It is therefore necessary to proceed with a method that represents the basement on
which it’s possible to structure our projects.
It is necessary to deepen education as a process, approaching different types of
learning, the idea of social inclusion and the reasons why there are still many
obstacles, especially referring to diversity, which often lead to discrimination and
marginalization.
It is necessary to understand what art education through art practice itself involves
(that’s why I visited Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, one of PERSE
partners). It is necessary to learn from the experience lived within an artistic
environment and to develop real educational processes where art and science are
powered by technological tools.
The art work can become transformative as well as learning and informal
education.
With PERSE method, we “connect these dots”. »
