On the occasion of the 40th UNESCO General Conference in Paris on November 13, 2019, the Symphony 2030 event was held in parallel with the André Bocelli Foundation, with the theme Creative Arts Education for Inclusion.
As the Jardim do Monte School is part of UNESCO’s Network of Portuguese Associated Schools, with which it collaborates annually in pedagogical meetings, it was invited to take part in this event as a unique testimony to the role of art in a school’s pedagogical project. Unique, in that all the other participants would testify to how art, especially music, played a therapeutic role in emergency situations – wars, natural disasters, etc – in various parts of the world.
With the Symphony 2030 project, the A. B. Foundation has launched the following challenge within the framework of UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship:
“Education is a source of fulfillment, discovery and transformation. By empowering children and young people with values and skills that enable them to live with others with respect and solidarity, education is a force for peace and sustainable development. All of this is protected within the vision of the 2030 Agenda, which contemplates the moral, social and humanistic purposes of education. Quality inclusive education needs to impart not only values, but also skills for the 21st century.”
This commitment between UNESCO and the A. B. Foundation aims to recognize the power of art in education to awaken the innate creativity that every human being has, protect the living cultural heritage and unite everyone around common values and aspirations that are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda.
We found the invitation surprising, since this school year our school, in continuation of the work started the previous year, is working very hard on inclusion measures, which include not only those established by the Inclusive School but also therapeutic measures within the Waldorf Pedagogy, which we are privileged to be able to offer our students.
Accompanied by a good visual support of our work, excited about the opportunity to present our pedagogy to a wide “non Waldorf” audience and knowing that I would be able to hear André Bocelli live singing the Ode to Joy, I flew to Paris!
Warmly welcomed by the organizing team, I still attended the General Conference, which focused mainly on Inclusion in Higher Education, and where Portugal was represented by António Nóvoa.
In the huge amphitheater where the session was to take place, I met the other participants – the Secretary General of the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, several music artists involved in peace work on behalf of UNESCO, as well as the artistic director of Voices of Haiti, which is one of the AB Foundation’s main projects – we chatted for a while and at the scheduled time André Bocelli arrived. He began by talking about music in his life, the role of his foundation and finally gave us Beethoven’s hymn, right there close to our hearts! It was thrilling!
The session also had some beautiful moments, when we heard what these people do with their music in areas of terror, where everything seems lost and yet, thanks to the human voice when it sings or the liberating power of music, how human beings can be rescued from their suffering and reconnected to the joy of living! One of these people, a Japanese violinist, after a few brief words, spoke to us through his violin, just as he does in the places he wants to rescue. It was magnificent!
For my part, I took the audience back to the school, looking at the beautiful images that bear witness to the children’s daily lives, the beauty of their work, the involvement of nature. I spoke about the transformative action of the world, which is the intention of the Waldorf School, and how the development of each child is nurtured so that each of them becomes a future agent of change; how art is present in every moment of their work, awakening the creative soul of the human being through it; how Waldorf pedagogy, as a salutogenic pedagogy, promotes inclusion, as the concept is understood today, through the respect that its practice devotes to the needs of each stage of development and through educational resources, particularly those of an artistic nature, which play a healing role in it, determining the construction of the Being.
It was very gratifying to feel and see the interest of the people who came to me in the end, with some of whom I was able to exchange warm words, full of confidence and recognition of the work that guides us in the name of the future.
I leave you with Steiner’s verse, with which I ended my participation (given by Maya Moussa, in the context of Art Therapy), a source of gratitude for the creative power of the human soul and which, I can say, was received with some emotion:
“At the beginning of time
The Spirit of Earth addressed the Spirit of Heaven
And begging him, he said:
I know how to speak to the Spirit of Man
But I beg you
May you grant me language
For which the Heart of the World
May you speak to the Heart of Man.
Then, full of kindness,
The Spirit of Heaven,
to the pleading Spirit of the Earth,
granted him Art.”
Leonor Malik
