FABLAB “SMALL WOOD WORKSHOP”
Prof. Mariano Brusca
Prof. Salvo Messina
FABLAB, a place of art and research, expresses the completeness of a path that from the classrooms of our Lyceum connects with the “territory” in the renovated space of the Piersanti Mattarella Historical Park.
Nature itself is a primary source of inspiration: “Follow the natural paths of creation. Perhaps one day you will be like nature itself, you will form like nature” (Paul Klee).
The Artistic high school Eustachio Catalano represents in the region (and beyond) an authoritative reference point for the training of future artists.
Many activities take place within it and in the various addresses: Figurative Arts, Scenography, Design, Architecture, Theatre. Disciplines that require appropriate venues for their development, spaces and environments suited to the transmission of an “alternative” knowledge with respect to other school addresses. Today, the Municipality of Palermo, through the NRRP, with the recovery and restoration of the Mattarella Park (formerly the English Garden) and the Falcone – Borsellino parterre (Garibaldi Garden), offers us the opportunity to do school in a public green space, the Piersanti Mattarella Park, not far from our school building.
To this end, a memorandum of understanding was signed last year between the municipality and the school, in which the programme agreements relating to transversal skills and orientation pathways are enshrined. The project was called FABLAB, Small Wood Workshop, and one of its prerogatives is to recover the wood of turnover plants and, through design study, give it new aesthetic, expressive and functional meanings, thus perpetuating the memory of wood. The large mutilated trunks, crashed to the ground, like old animals that let themselves die, and the large ficus trees envelop the space, the palm trees rise up, imposing strange symmetries. Nature dictates its laws as always, and we learn to listen to it.
Bringing pupils to the park means exciting them, getting them into an expressive creative context in which the colours, the area, the open space sets them free to express their emotions, their feelings, makes them witness a reality of their own that belongs to them.
A space to be experienced in full autonomy and awareness of their abilities, in the discovery of their talent.
“The territory, as a reduced but equally contextual term of communication, today expresses the generalising concept of the framework of life, since it generates, consolidates, corroborates, provokes, overturns, reconstitutes and relates sites, products, images, imaginations, memory, nature, culture, history”. (Francesco Carbone).
On a hot afternoon, the students, freshly out of school, join us in the park, curiously exploring new spaces, the drawing easels wait for us unfolded on the lawn, the sheets await the traces. Inside the park, preparations are in full swing for the new opening to the public, the workers stack the last stones to mark out the paths, fix the lamp posts…
We arrive under a large ficus tree where a large branch lies. Tools, gouges and wooden hammers are taken out of a box, frantically they begin to beat and carve the bark, the wood. The boys appear to us as small, hard-working ants intent on their frenzied labour, happy and incredulous at their unexpected freedom.
We immediately realise how effective knowledge and understanding transmitted through direct experience outside the school walls can be, even the relationship with the learners, in a natural context, takes on an authentic, even more important meaning.
Our High school’s mission is to discover and educate in beauty, with respect for nature. It introduces young minds to distant worlds and gives the mind a free and creative view of the world. The right side of the brain, often dormant, is stimulated, liberated, elevated. This is why our students stand out, because this freedom of thought translates into total, all-encompassing freedom.
Inspiration cannot be taught. The form is already in the artist’s mind, the hand bends to the artist’s will, the concept, having become objective reality, is then donated to the world. After so many years of teaching, in spite of the punishments contained in the didactic regulations and the many difficulties, we are still amazed and moved when we meet children who are eager to explore the world through art. For us teachers, each school year is like the planning and realisation of a work of art. We have nine months, the same as a human life, and we try with all our soul to create the masterpiece. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don’t, but what remains is the miracle of teaching/learning, that constant exchange with the students that enriches above all those who teach. Today, a new opportunity enriches us: our high school, already a place of creativity and passion, will benefit from the FABLAB, the small wood workshop that will allow our students to fly.
