Art-based methodologies and school education: the emancipatory value of the performing arts in the post-pandemic era

The use of workshop, play and artistic-expressive activities in educational work with young people always has great transformative potential. Indeed, these activities are not only opportunities for experiential and situated learning (Wenger, 2006), but also activators and facilitators of the symbolization process. They allow us to experience relational dynamics that, however "simplified", are easily found in everyday life experiences (Wulf, 2014). The present communication intends to focus on the artistic-expressive workshop activities designed and implemented with two classes of 7-year-olds in an Italian elementary school. The purpose is to highlight how artistic methodologies-especially in such a complex historical moment as the one we are living now-have a cognitive, affective and social impact that involves the entire personality structure of the subjects who experience them (Corsi, 2020). They represent effective educational and didactic tools capable of stimulating emulation, fostering vicarious learning (Bandura, 1977), bringing out emotional experiences and recovering the emancipatory value that distinguishes all the performing arts, especially drama and music.