Italy

In collaboration with

Working on the development of emotional intelligence of children and young people in the heart of Scampia. This is the challenge that the Patrizio Paoletti Foundation has taken on when responding to an invitation of the APD Circo Corsaro Association. In a neighborhood that is unfortunately infamous for its high level social degradation, we are offering children and adolescents new opportunities through education. We have introduced a free social circus school and a recreational-pedagogic circus laboratory in the middle school and various other training opportunities as a part of main national events in the area of social circus.

The project is called “Corsaro Circus School. Training for beauty: the road, the journey and everything else”. It is enrolled in the national register of Social Circus projects of the AltroCirco network and in the world mapping drawn up by Cirque di Soleil. Its intention is to combat social degradation and school dropout. The educational tools we use are the “Pedagogy for the third millennium” and the social circus, pedagogical methodologies that are the subject of numerous psychological and neuroscientific research, able to provide children and adolescents with tools for the development of emotional intelligence and the ability to prefigure the future. The circus used as a pedagogical practice teaches the children to respect the rules, others and the group.

This practice, where the young people and children test themselves in aerial acrobatics on trapezes and fabrics, in juggling and ground acrobatics, enables:

to enhance the children’s communicational skills with their peers;
increase their self-esteem and the ability to be resilient;
to become aware of their own state of physical wellbeing and the concrete possibility to act personally to improve it;
to reinforce their technical/motoric abilities in the various disciplines proposed;
to teach them to recognize emotions, manage and orient them;
to offer opportunities to share their expressive needs;
to offer place of physical and emotional safety in which the young people feel free to express their uniqueness and beauty;
to promote their active citizenship;
to stimulate collaborative relationships.

The Area Nord Theater is the central hub of the project and the social circus school, and what they call their “home”. Here, you find those who have been learning the circus arts from one to six years, but above all they are learning to express their uniqueness and beauty, to manage their emotions and be together as a family. Through the years their effort and their passion have become the symbol of possible change, an example for many other children like them, but also for the adults.