Unprepared Hearts - Europa Creativa

Unprepared Hearts – Cuori impreparati is a European project co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and, for the part managed by MUBA, also by Fondazione Cariplo. The project involved three cultural and artistic organizations dedicated to children in three different EU member states:

• MUBA – Museo dei Bambini di Milano, representing Italy
• Sladovna – Children’s Museum of Písek, representing the Czech Republic
• Da’DeCe Cultural Association, representing Romania

All these institutions are partners of Hands On! – International Association of Children in Museums, an international network promoting the exchange of experiences and expertise among children’s museums.

The project targeted children in the last two years of primary school and lower secondary school.

The aim of the project was to engage artists in offering a programme on emotional education specifically designed for preadolescents. The topic is complex but particularly relevant for children in this age group, who are navigating changes in their bodies, emotions, and interpersonal relationships. Unprepared Hearts – Cuori impreparati sought to guide children through a journey in which growth, transformation, relationships, emotions, and feelings are central, using the language of art.

The specific objectives were:

• To deepen understanding of emotional education, change, and diversity;
• To experiment with the use of artistic and metaphorical language to explore feelings, and to innovate the mediation of content through imagination, planning, organization, and execution of workshops;
• To support preadolescents in achieving learning outcomes related to emotional education, thereby enhancing their personal development;
• To test a model of co-creation, co-design, and exchange between countries, with the aim of strengthening and expanding established experience on the subject.

Unprepared Hearts – Cuori impreparati gave rise to three workshops, one for each project partner:

• Embroidered Feelings, conceived and created by MUBA in collaboration with the artist Coquelicot Mafille;
• Seven Valleys, designed by Sladovna in partnership with the TPO company from Prato;
• Unspoken, developed by Da’DeCe.

Given the pandemic situation that arose during the implementation of the project, the partners decided to adapt two workshops (Embroidered Feelings and Seven Valleys) to an online format.

To enhance the dissemination of the project through social networks and to encourage reflection on the experiences lived, the initiative “UHinpills” was created—short reflections by participants on their experience of Unprepared Hearts – Cuori Impreparati. The collaborative work and skills developed over these two years made it possible to create a sort of “project within the project”, which strengthened the entire Unprepared Hearts initiative.

The two online workshops and the UHinpills were planned and implemented from mid-April to the end of June 2020.