Art does not need to be interesting, or even something important. The value of art resides in its nature as something vital, something that transforms our lives and in so doing transforms us. It is this power that makes art a wonderful ally of education.

This premise leads to the following fundamental question: how can we insure that art truly burst into the lives of young people? There is probably no single answer to this question. But during our years of exploration, projects, and experience, we realized several principles and several terms that we believe can and should guide our desires: experimentation, revolution, audacity, risk, desire… This is what creation is.

Among the different activities at A Bao A Qu, “Cinema en curs,” an experimental cinema workshop project developed in public schools and high schools in Catalonia, stands out. In our lecture we’ll focus on three matters of the project: 1) how the aforementioned principles move and shape up the project; 2) the specific pedagogical powers of cinema as an art and as a creation process; and 3) what the exploration of these principles in the classrooms has shown us: what happens when cinema bursts into the everyday life of schools?

Together, Núria Aidelman and Laia Colell direct A Bao A Qu, an association devoted to conceiving and developing pedagogical activities linked to the artistic creation. They have also collaborated with institutions such as the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona, the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and several cinema festivals.

www.aspaiabaoaqu.org • www.cinemaencurs.org

Sunday | Jan. 18 | 10 am