“Bringing art to schools is the objective of the A Tempo program,” says Salvador Sunyer, director of the Montaña Alta festival, which organizes this educational project together with the Fundació Ciutat Invisible and the support of the Fundació Banc Sabadell. “The activities are free and are done during school hours, to complement this gap that, in our opinion, there is in formal education,” he adds. The lucky educational centers are from Girona and Salt, which for the seventh consecutive year benefit from the shock wave that High Season represents. There are 36 artistic proposals, which will reach more than three thousand students.
This educational leg of the festival has several parts, such as Estación Alta a l'aula, which offers ten shows that will address topics such as sustainability, mental health, racism, gender issues or aesthetic pressure. The shows are designed for students of different ages, who can talk with the artists after the work.
As a novelty, A Tempo presents A distància, a new digital platform that is available to all teachers in Catalan-speaking territories, with materials that they can use to introduce the arts in the classroom. In the Artistes a l’aula project, until now in person and now also online, professionals present their works and explain their work. They are artists such as the Cabosanroque company, the actress Rosa Gàmiz, the playwright and actor Jordi Oriol, the dancers Elena and Marta Masó or the playwrights Aleix Fauró and Isis Martín, from La Virgueria, who present the exercise Construcció d'escenes de l' impulses
With the Crea el teu projecte program, the institutes work for a whole year with an artist, like Oriol Broggi in a previous edition: “What is important is not so much the result they present in Estación Alta, but the entire process,” he remarks. Sunyer.
In parallel with the Dramaturgical Tournament, one is held for institutes, with a different dynamic. This year, Albert Forns, Lara Díez Quintanilla and Xavi Buxeda will teach students how to write a play. Four of the works written by the students are chosen and a dramatized reading is carried out in the La Planeta room, performed by professional interpreters.
The A Tempo project also seeks to introduce poetry in high schools, with the Poetitza't program. The objective is to motivate secondary school students “to read and also write poetry and develop a creative sensitivity.” In this edition, it is the poets Josep Pedrals and David Castillo who will visit the classrooms.
The director of the festival affirms that many times the teachers in charge of artistic disciplines “do not know how to introduce them in the class because they have not received specific training to do so.” That is why these resources, the seminar that will be held in Seville and the masterclasses that are taught online, want to help teachers in this fundamental task of training.
Catalan version, here
