Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

4,4 million euros allocated for the renovation of furnishings in nurseries, nursery schools, primary and secondary schools and holiday homes

Milan, June 13 2020 – Imagining the school of the future, thinking not only about the innovation of teaching methodologies, but also about how the organization of spaces within school buildings changes to adapt to new methods and create new educational environments. This is the objective of the Milan Manifesto, approved by the Council and which will be signed by the Municipality of Milan, the Regional School Office, Indire and Assodidattica.

The debate on innovative school spaces is at the center of school policies, but the vast majority of schools are built and operated with a traditional logic, and therefore not suited to the needs of the most advanced educational experiments. A rethinking of learning environments instead requires overcoming the idea of ​​the school as a set of closed environments - classrooms for frontal teaching primarily - connected by corridors and atriums used as places of passage. To be effective, innovation must arise from a comparison between the actors involved, through participatory planning paths between local authorities, educational institutions, teachers, families, research centres, universities, designers and the world of production. A method that can and must support the school in a delicate moment like the current one: rethinking the spaces becomes even more necessary for the resumption in September, but above all to build a future that is truly innovative.

Precisely for this purpose, a table is active in Milan between representatives of various institutional subjects to promote and support the challenge of changing learning environments. An orientation that has already been pursued in the city in recent years, with more or less radical interventions, as well as in the construction of the new Trotter secondary school, in around twenty other schools in the city, through the setting up of some environments innovative learning opportunities: First level secondary school in via Gallarate 15, First level primary school in via Gentilino 10/14, First level primary school in via Martinengo 36, First level primary school in via Palmieri 24, First level primary school and secondary school in Via San Colombano 8, First level primary school and secondary school primary school in via Pescarenico 2, primary school in via Pestalozzi 13, first grade secondary school in via Quarenghi 14, primary school in via Brunacci 2, primary school in via Vigevano 19, first school secondary school in via Colonna 42, primary school in piazza Sicilia 2, primary school in via Delle Ande 4, Primary school in via Saponaro 36/A, Secondary school in via Arcadia 24. 

Added to these interventions is the “Color Spaces” project carried out at the “A. Manzoni" of the Municipality of Milan, where the opportunity to break the unity of the class group was exploited to develop innovative educational itineraries that could not be implemented in classrooms due to the rigidity of the furnishings and the limited dimensions: three of the six spaces that house offices in a of the areas of the complex in via Deledda have been designated for teaching, furnishing them with tables of various shapes, shelves and cushions. Areas where all the elements can be moved, encouraging customization and work in small groups that are made up and broken down as needed, with furnishings that change and adapt to the needs of different but contemporary activities.

“Innovative schools - declares Education Councilor Laura Galimberti -, in which the spaces are designed together with the teachers, are more beautiful and attractive and, in the more complicated neighbourhoods, where educational and social poverty are more accentuated, they are stem school dropout and segregation because they create social cohesion and inclusion. Our objective, therefore, is to work to broaden the diffusion of innovative learning spaces where applying new teaching methodologies is easier, to ensure that the memory of school as a succession of orderly rows of children sitting in front of the teacher's desk is passed. We believe very much in this project and in the collaboration between all the actors involved and, in order for this purpose to be transformed into concrete actions, we have allocated new funds to be used between now and 2021".

The Covid-19 emergency has in fact accelerated the need to rethink teaching spaces and methods also to allow the safe resumption of school activities. To extend the orientation that inspires the Manifesto to an increasingly large number of schools, the Council has allocated resources of around 4,4 million euros for the supply of school furniture for nurseries, nursery schools, primary schools and lower secondary schools, civic schools and holiday homes.

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