Etwinning

A painted concert in Aranjuez

The famous Concierto de Aranjuez (1939), a musical composition for guitar and orchestra by Joaquín Rodrigo and certainly his best known work, serves as the inspiration for the title of this article in which we present the activity which has been carried out by 5th year students at the CEIP SAN FERNANDO DE ARANJUEZ school (MADRID), in the eTwinning project PAINTERS AND COLOURS WITHOUT BORDERS.

The development and results of the activity take us to the Royal Palace of Aranjuez and evoke moments for enjoying the sound of the water in the fountains, or the rustling of the trees in the gardens. This is the way we can approach the project.

In the words of the coordinator, Juan Jesús Martín Navarro, “Our project is based on artistic expression in education, and has been worked on in four European schools since the 2010-2011 school year. The schools are: South Stanley Junior and Tyneview Primary School (United Kingdom), TS Het Molenschip (Belgium) and the CEIP San Fernando school (Spain). To achieve the objectives proposed in the project, activities have been designed in which we have tried to involve the whole community (teachers, students, families, town council, educational centres, local artists, the media…).

One of these activities, a consequence of the involvement of the families, has been the selection and discovery of local painters. Taking as a reference the Catalan artist Santiago Rusiñol, who lived and died in Aranjuez, and whose most important works are paintings of the Royal Palaces of Aranjuez, and La Granja, Carmen, a local artist and the grandmother of one of the students in the 5th year, has worked with the students, allowing them to interview her and lastly setting them a task on what they have learned. The children have learned about Rusiñol, about the gardens, about how to prepare the canvas before starting the painting, how to mix the colours, and she has shown them a painting technique. After this, and with great enthusiasm, the children have left the school to enjoy an adventure in the open air in contact with nature to capture the moment, like the artist Rusiñol did many years ago. After this enriching experience the works of the children have been exhibited on the walls of the school corridors so that the whole educational community could enjoy them.

This task has been shared with the European partners in the project, who have also carried out tasks like this; you can see all their work in the project TwinSpace:

http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p57396

According to the teacher, the project has been designed with the conviction that art stimulates our students and develops their imagination and creativity. It promotes the free expression of feelings and values, as well as respect for different languages and cultures. All the students, whatever their abilities, can communicate through art and this will serve as a basis for their knowledge of other cultures and contexts, which although they are different, have common European roots.

The topic of the project has become the guideline for all the curricular activities in our school.

With this project we have tried to develop the artistic skills of the students, to use local material and resources and create experiences with other European schools to increase their knowledge of art. In this working context, the partner schools basically aim for the students to have the opportunity to make their discoveries from their own experience and thus build wider knowledge of different cultures and societies. We aim to prepare our students to be citizens of the world where cooperative work is necessary.

Our project is integrated into the curriculum and we work in the different areas, but we should emphasize the increase in the use of ICTs in our school to communicate with each other and exchange experiences with the partners and to create material. Our school is also a bilingual school in the Madrid Autonomous Community and the project has served to improve learning in English and above all, as a motivation to communicate and share ideas and travel to other countries.

Other educational centres have collaborated in the project (workshops with teachers from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Centro Felipe II in Aranjuez, from the Complutense University and from other schools in Aranjuez, art experts…) as well as other institutions (local exhibitions and visits to museums).

This activity and the project, as in general in all the participating countries, have been disseminated in the local radio and press in Aranjuez, as well as in national educational journals like Magisterio Español.

Our project which is developed simultaneously with a Comenius association has benefitted the whole school. All the educational community know that we are working on the Comenius project and that we use the eTwinning space to communicate and share experiences. For all of these reasons, the CEIP San Fernando school has decided to continue with these projects and to apply for a new one for the next two school years.