Do you remember what it was like to see the world when you were a child? What were your prospects for life and how did you have the opportunity to bring them out? The answers to these questions are unique, but one thing is certain: the role of art in child development is directly linked to the way of imagining and expressing ideas.

After all, art is a field of knowledge characterized as transdisciplinary and that, at various times, assumes a collective posture of experiences and construction of knowledge. In other words: from artistic activities, we can integrate knowledge, fine-tune our critical perception of everyday life and invite others to share our experiments and reflections. According to the portal e-docente:

“Brazil is a country recognized worldwide for its cultural diversity and sophisticated aesthetic production, which emerges from its mixed population. We find this power in all dimensions of society; in cultures of ancestral indigenous and African matrices, in the sertanejas, riverside, caipiras and caiçaras cultures and in the urban culture that is established from the European and Asian migration flows in the early 20th century.”

But what is the role of art in child development?

There are countless ways to visualize art, due to the fact that it is a very broad concept. This brings with it many advantages, especially for children who experience contact with artistic manifestations from an early age – whether through dance, circus, theater, visual arts, cultural expression, or even invention and storytelling.

It is in childhood that we have the first contacts with the ways in which the world works: from personal relationships with other individuals, to the role we play within a society and, therefore, experiencing the possibility of expressing ourselves fully is crucial even in the first years of life. And this is where art comes into play: to show us the possibility of communicating through actions such as drawings, paintings, dances, music and texts.

Through art, children communicate their interpretations of the reality that surrounds them and also their emotional state, showing how they feel and how the world affects them, both positively and negatively. This contributes strongly to the development of creativity and ways of seeing the world around. We believe in the role of art in child development as an action that encourages protagonism and critical thinking.

Art at the Purunã Institute

The Purunã Institute works for sustainable development in São Luiz do Purunã, with a focus on tourism. It is understood that in order to achieve such development, it is necessary to promote, in addition to a healthy environment, fair social conditions including access to culture, and that it is economically viable for all people.

To achieve sustainable development is necessary to strengthen public management – once the result of its work reflects directly on the communities. Therefore, the Purunã Institute offers the Educando project in the educational field, to strengthen the integrality of formal education in the district and enable children and adolescents to become protagonists to act for the development of São Luiz do Purunã. Learn more about our work in tune with the arts:

Educating Project

We believe that education is the best way to boost the development of our region. In line with this idea, the Educating project contributes to the integral training of students in the São Luiz do Purunã district and makes the school even more attractive. Through the methodology of Parabolé – Education and Culture, artistic and cultural workshops are developed with children from 6 months to 14 years old that relate formal education to art, and work with themes such as nature, citizenship and culture in a transversal way.

Our work in Educating has already impacted several children and adolescents over the years:

Nº of children assisted

Nº hours of activities

% of the public assisted likes the activities

% of parents consider the project actions important for their children

% of children and young people in the district are assisted

And now, learn a little more about the workshops of the Educating project: 

Narratives

Through storytelling, music, gestures, drawings, collages and painting, we seek to expand the children’s oral repertoire, stimulate expressive mastery in different body languages and develop a taste for reading and stories. In this workshop, we work with children from 6 months to 8 years old. 

Circus

This workshop promotes the knowledge about circus culture, sharpening emotional control in several situations, as well as increasing body balance and sensory motor perception, integrating students into group activities, reducing conflicts between participants. 

Learn more about the role of the circus in early childhood education aqui.

Gaucho culture

Based on playfull games, legends, dances, music and games linked to the gaucho tradition, we establish connections with the cultural reality of São Luiz do Purunã that refers to tropeirismo. Our proposal is to ensure quality inclusive and equitable education, in addition to promoting opportunities for lifelong learning.

And, 2020 brings news in the Educating Project, this year, students will participate in two more workshops:

VISUAL ARTS:

Students will explore their talents for art, with a lot of playfulness and fun, combining nature, conservation of natural resources and appreciation of Local Culture.

MAKER:

In this workshop – which integrates Art and Technology – students will exercise their creative capacity by putting their hands in the dough, through accessible techniques, bringing new cultural references and valuing the local culture.

And the BE-lieve Project also had a pinch of art:

The APAP-PR, Professional Association of Visual Artists of Paraná, provided to the students of the BE-lieve Project the Artistic Expressions workshop, in which students worked on freedom of expression in contemporary painting, allowing the mixing of materials and the construction of varied colors from the primary. The moment took place through the artist Ilka Passos, and was held at the Campo das Artes

In addition, in a field trip full of cultural diversity, students visited the largest art museum in Latin America, the MON – Museu Oscar Niemeyer, which has approximately 7 thousand works in the areas of visual arts, design and architecture. On this visit, the focus of our students was the Asian exhibition, where they could get to know sculptures, furniture, paintings, objects, prints, dating from 3,000 BC to pieces of the 21st century.

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