Workshop European Project SPEME (Spaces of Memory): Transmitting Memory to (Very) Young Generations. An Experiment with the Children of Federzoni Primary School in Bologna

After an initial classroom exploration of thoughts on intensive farming and zoos, activating the children’s prior knowledge about the concepts of captivity and imprisonment, the project moved on to the production and empathy phase. The children wrote texts “as if” they were animals in the zoo, while simultaneously, teacher Gianluca Gabrielli read them a modified version of Daniel Pennac’s “The Eye of the Wolf” to introduce the Fossoli Camp and the imprisonment of humans. The young students then visited the Fossoli Camp, retracing the history of the Bolognese partisan relay Nella Baroncini. In the final phase of the project, the children synthesized all these experiences by creating a large poster for their Federzoni school classroom.