PARTICIPATION TO EMPOWER CHILDREN AND STRENGTHEN THE COMMUNITY

Abstract

In a pandemic, children’s participation is even more important than before. This paper presents the first stage of an exploratory study for my PhD research in Pedagogy beginning in January 2021 in Milan. The participants are 19 pupils of class 4B (primary school), their parents and the teachers who joined energies to reproject a square, in order to transform it into a welcoming space for the entire community. In Italy, public speeches did not mention children who could not finally use public spaces for months as they were identified as the “plague spreaders”. The project revisits this perspective by considering children as potential actors of the transformation. Only if adults set the conditions for a change, children, their needs and their imagination could become agents for that change and centre of the community. The project name is Piazziamoci (Let’s place ourselves here) to signify the conscious act of taking a place together. After a theoretical framework of the study within Student Voice, I describe the generative circumstances, the context and the first steps of the project. The children explored the square, interviewed the inhabitants, shared information and dreams with their classmates coming up with proposals to present to City Council. This first phase aimed to set the basis of my investigation on the participants self-awareness as people and members of the community; it also focuses on the perception of the square as a common good. To this purpose, this work introduces concepts as the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004), imagination and creativity (Vygotsky, 1930/2004), interdependence (Butler, 2020), and, therefore, a political and educational interpretation of the project.