THE ART-EXPRESSIVE WORKSHOP IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BETWEEN EXPERIENTIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING. A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Laboratory activities at elementary school, with their playful and artistic-expressive forms, always contain great transformative potential. Not only opportunities for experiential and situated learning (Wenger, 2006), but also useful to facilitate symbolization processes and to experience relationships. Although “simplified”, these dynamics are easily reflected in everyday life situations (Wulf, 2014). Starting from these premises, the paper focuses on the workshop activities of expressive reading and dramatization of a theatrical-musical text, co-conducted in the second quarter of the 2021 school year in an elementary school in the Province of Pesaro-Urbino, Italy. The main goal is to highlight how such activities – especially in time of pandemic, whose impact was first “[...] cognitive, and then transferred to the affective and social dimensions [and], therefore, to the entire personality structure of the individuals involved” (Corsi, 2020, p. 30) – represented educational and didactic tools for emulation, fostering vicarious learning (Bandura, 1977) , allowing the emergence of emotional experiences, and recovering the emancipatory value that characterizes all performing arts, in particular, theatre and music.