The area around Vicenza is rich in culture and landscape, but also home to urbanised and industrial land, where soil and environmental care are often lacking. In this context, children rarely get educational experiences that bring them close to nature and the local landscape, or that treat green spaces as places to grow and connect with others.
Urban expansion fragments natural habitats, reduces biodiversity, disrupts water cycles and adds to emissions, effects that reach well beyond city limits and touch water and energy security too. Giving children and their educators real moments of contact with nature, built around performance and shared experience, supports their cognitive and emotional development and lays the groundwork for a stronger sense of ecological citizenship later in life.
The project
O.A.S.I. uses theatre in nature to bring value back to green spaces, whether in central or peripheral neighbourhoods, turning them into genuine oases of art and wonder. Outdoor performances sit alongside pedagogical training for teachers and nature-based workshops for teachers and parents, together with ongoing care and monitoring of the green spaces the project uses.
Nature here is not treated as a simple backdrop but as a living setting for learning, relationship and artistic creation. Theatre becomes a way to educate for beauty, care and responsibility towards the local area, turning an aesthetic experience into something genuinely educational and communal, all offered free of charge so that access depends on interest, not means.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries are class groups and school sections across Vicenza and its province: around 1,000 children attending kindergarten and primary school, mostly in the early primary years.
Its impact reaches further, to the teachers, educators and cultural operators involved in the activities, and to participating children's families, who take part in the project's outdoor workshops alongside them.
Project name: O.A.S.I. (Officina. Arte. Sostenibilità. Infanzia.)
Proposing organisation: WONDERING PROJECT APS
Area of intervention: Environment & Sustainable Communities
Country: Italy