The main idea of the project is to involve students in discovering the “basic beauty that connects us all”. That means trying to discover something unusual, moving, emotional in our everyday life, in the people or places we pass by on our way to school or work.
This picture, on the left, is “Newstand in the night“, by the American painter Norman Rockwell. If we could see it a bit bigger, we would an old nice lady knitting inside the newstand in NY. It’s the 20th of December, Christmas is here, but the year was 1941. The word was in war. The US were going out from a big crisis and all the families had a son, a husband or a brother who was going to the Army. Difficult times… and yet, the interior of the newstand is warm and peaceful. Outside, the snow covered everything and it is dark, but the message from Rockwell seems to be :“In the darkest night, there is still some reason for hope.”
Your work may take any form at all: something written on a wall, a certain phrase that pops into our mind, a photo(any of us can take with our cell phone ) of a special/beautiful moment we happen to witness . In other words, together we can see the “extra” in the “ordinary” and then share the “extraordinary” little things that life is made of, everywhere. For example, a photo of a balloon floating up in the air with a simple short sentence like “there is sun, inside” or just a simple description of the image (ex.“child, smiling”).
Our idea is that the soul has no country but it speaks the same language. At the end of the project, captions, written thoughts and pictures can be gathered in an exhibition. A Power-point short film can be made and put on youtube, or we could even offer the final “product” to UNICEF or any other similar organization to use it in promotional campaigns meant to raise interest in giving children/people chances to see the essential beauty of a normal life, etc.
The Vintage Cottage 