Wednesday 4 December the first YAWP Festival

On 4 December 2024, in Milan, the Francesco Morelli Foundation will launch the first edition of the YAWP Festival, a free event open to the city and curated by Benedetta Marietti.

The aim of the initiative is to pay homage to the figure of Francesco Morelli as a cultural entrepreneur and visionary founder of the European Institute of Design (IED), to present to the public the Foundation that bears his name, and to reflect on the role that schools play in the world today and on the need to bring about an educational revolution. 

The term YAWP was chosen for this purpose, as original and revolutionary as the famous poem by Walt Whitman from which it is taken: it is a liberating cry from the experience of pain and an invitation to take the reins of one's own destiny and act to achieve the maximum expression of the potential that each person possesses.

The day will be characterised by a succession of speeches by illustrious exponents of the cultural world and moments of co-creation between high school students, IED alumni and Foundations that have distinguished themselves in the field of education.

In the morning, Fondazione Reggio Children  will speak with the workshop Space speaks, how to listen to it, an invitation to think about the potential of space to be understood as an actor that influences the people who inhabit it and their intentions, but also as an educator thanks to its shapes, its layouts, its luminosity, its colours and the scents it brings with it. Space is also to be understood as a learning environment, as a promoter of relationships between living beings.

In this sense, designing an educational environment means creating a perfect marriage between pedagogy and architecture, between design and anthropology, bearing in mind social, cultural and political aspects.

Fondazione Agnelli will then present a hands-on workshop entitled Six-Bricks & Marabì: Let's train spatial skills by playing with the aim of providing theoretical and practical foundations of the Six Bricks method and the Matabì project through the use of LEGO®DUPLO® bricks, while Fondazione Golinelli will focus on The impact of AI on study and work activities: Investigating the relationship between AI and creativity with the aim of understanding AI and its practical declinations, how it can become an opportunity for development and enrichment despite the fact that many ethical and social debates about it are still open. Guided dialogues on the impact of technologies in our society will thus originate.              

       

The afternoon, from 6.30 p.m., will be dedicated to the theme of school in various forms through lectures by Edoardo Albinati, a writer and teacher in the Rebibbia prison for over thirty years: he distinguished himself by winning the Strega prize with his novel La scuola cattolica (published by Rizzoli) and for having edited, together with Francesca d'Aloja, the reportages Otto giorni in Niger (Baldini+Castoldi, 2018) and Vite in sospeso. Migranti e rifugiati ai confini d'Europa (Baldini+Castoldi, 2022). Drawing on his wealth of experience, he will interact with those present, urging them on the challenges of teaching in prison. This will be followed by Francesca Mannocchi, a journalist and writer committed to the themes of migration and conflict, who will lead us to reflect on the need to talk about war in the classroom, while Rachele Furfaro, an expert in cooperative learning pedagogy and cultural policies, will talk about the relationship between institutions and schools and the need for collaboration between the two parties to tackle the current social emergency.

Finally, Matteo Lancini, psychologist, psychotherapist and president of the Minotauro Foundation, where he directs the Technological Addictions Team and the adolescent section of the Consultation and Psychotherapy Centre, will talk about the fragility of the relationship between adults and children in today's society.