“Beauty will save the world” is one of the most renowned quote by Fedor Dostoevskij. Frequently abused, this phrase was taking seriously by the founders of Baby Caring, a kindergarten to educate to beauty in Milan.
Baby Caring is a bilingual nursery born in a historically important building for the city of Milan: the Mantegazza Foundation, San Calcero 16 street. Here, Laura Solera Mantegazza opened the first kindergarten in 1850 with the purpose of helping female workers not to leave their children. A place that has been destined to host great and beautiful things since its birth has reopened its doors in March 2017.
The core philosophy of this Children Innovation Lab is “Who sows ideas, collects certainties”. The promise, on the other hand, is to educate to beauty, in all its artistic and conceptual nuances, children from 1 to 12 y.o. through a playful and artistic experience. The traditional formative programs are rewrote by the centrality of the child who becomes the active protagonist in modifying, consciously or unconsciously, his training path based on his tendencies and interests.
Education takes place primarily through the daily participation in works of art exhibited like a gallery inside the structure: interiors, as well as furnitures, are signed by big names of art and design; here we find ‘numeric’ paintings by Paolo De Cuarto and fairy wooden sculptures by Duilio Forte. Atelier Forte designed also ‘Ursus’, a big wooden bear that can be climbed and explored by pupils in total safety, demonstrating that in a kindergarten to educate to beauty no details can be omitted and that all contributes harmoniously to the play and educational experience. The workshops are important part of the program too and are designed by renowned artists; an example is Micro-Memory, curated by Armenian artist Liana Ghukasyan, where children are stimulated to create themed images on a paper created in laboratory, in order to make small books.
The educational proposal is based on the theory of multiple intelligences by H.Gardner, a contemporary american psychologist who theorizes the existence of multiple level development in the person, from linguistic to musical or video-spatial. This approach to knowledge allows to stimulate kids under different topics and underline their big potentialities, cultivating beauty and design values. Innovative teaching, in which new technologies and learning blend and promote, also through media and robotics, playful experiences to draw, compose music, design images and create stories.
At Baby Caring Mantegazza innovation touches organizational aspect too: the kindergarten is open all year round, 7 days a week and the tratitional annual frequency formula is flanked by the ‘time’ one that follow the parents working times. In this way school support the work-life balance of the family, so hard to find already in the XIX century at the time of foundation of the building, let alone in today’s society.
Baby Caring Mantegazza is a positive news not only in the world of education. In a historic moment where neglect or badness often prevails, a kindergarten to educate to beauty is what it takes to turn a quote into real hope.
