The wood, in which Pinocchio is cut, is the humanity. (Benedetto Croce) Pinocchio is one of the most read, translated and sold books in the world. As well as for the most famous classical texts, such as the Odyssey, it is a journey in and out himself. Pinocchio visits fantastic places, meets different people, crosses the goodness and badness, discovers, among the people he meets, that the world is rich and interesting because of the nuances, and realizes that good and evil, the indolent and the industrious, lie and sincerity, hatred and love, selfishness and gratitude coexist in all of us. It is here, therefore, that the trip also, and perhaps above all, becomes an inner journey in which to be important, indeed, is not the destination but the trip itself, in which the puppet meets people and different cultures, visits places and distant countries, uses rich and plural ways to communicate, grows, not to become "better" or "best", but to acquire full awareness of himself and the world that surrounds him. The experiences of life, the variety of communicative tools, the intercultural exchanges that the street, and the multiform and colored personalities that populate it, can represent, for the young generations, as it was for Pinocchio, one of the most important aspects in their own process of human and social growth. In the cities of Collodi in Italy (not by chance the city of the creator of Pinocchio), Saint Maria de Feira in Portugal and Novi Sad in Serbia, are seats of important Festivals devoted to street arts. Among the different activities of the festivals, we consider music, particularly the orchestral music, as a formative tool, as a source of universal communication and social interaction. The model to which we are inspired is the System Abreu, born in Venezuela in the '70’s and subsequently spread all over the world. In the symphonic orchestras created by Abreu, the street children have found a pleasant and sure community, a place where they can develop their own talent aiming to a professional level, affirming themselves in the musical field, often redeeming themselves from a condition of uneasiness and exclusion that they lived since when they were kids. One of the principles of the "System" Abreu is that the ablest students help those ones in difficulty, in the collective interest of the orchestra. The orchestra, therefore, seen as inclusive community according to a peer education concept: the music as universal language; the street and the urban spaces not seen as places of uneasiness and loneliness anymore, but indeed as realities that, through the artistic expression and the music, can turn into places of socialization, and become sure and pleasant shelter for the ones who are in trouble or are forced to migrate looking for a hospitable community. Some educational realities that perform their own activity next to the festivals seats have been involved in the project development. They are scholastic realities specialized in teaching and diffusion of musical activity. The Project should develop itself following a series of activity: • An activity of training of trainers for the teachers of the involved schools and developed by particularly prepared international trainers on the field of social inclusion, of sustainability, and use of digital technologies. Together with this we also think to appointments devoted to the training related to the system Abreu to ensure the develop of this method also after the end of the project. Obviously the creative application of the system Abreu brings the virtuous fruit of the innovation in the field of music education and of the social value of its universal language. • The connection of training activities with festivals as occasions of comparison and growth is the heart of the project: young boys and girls, as Pinocchio did, travel meeting streets and squares, become places of communication, socialization, and thanks to international musical campus in which they meet other cultures, share moments of growth and learning, as well as become protagonists of the cultural ferment of those territories through the orchestral activity. • This cultural, social and artistic ferment, could culminate in the production of original works by the participants to the project, that could contribute to disseminate its spores over the duration of the project and the borders of the participating countries. We hope that humanity, intended both as affiliation to the common nation of the human kind, and as the quality that makes us human, can represent, besides the wood in which Pinocchio is carved, also material with which the students involved in our project, will try to shape their own lives.
A partnership made up of different organizations but at the same time equally committed to the enhancement of ensemble music as a didactic element of social inclusion and personal growth for students was the fertile context of this project. A rich variety of experiences characterized the background of the project: the "Abreu System" (MAP) based on the inclusion of students with social and cultural differences in peer education, tutoring and cooperative learning activity, the community project of the "Orquestra Criativa "(PT), a "social link" that unites heterogeneous groups of students and members of the local community at risk of social marginalization, the formal music teaching in the Italian school system of "Una Rete per la Musica", the experience of performing arts in Street Festivals and in the development of digital tools for innovative educational paths of Open Street aislb and Collodi Foundation. The main objective was the development of a new musical teaching methodology as a result of the integration of the different teaching methods of the 3 countries, through a multimedia platform that allowed interaction between teachers and students from different countries in musical workshop for composing original music pieces inspired by the book of Pinocchio. The platform led also to the development of innovative educational activities. The development of inclusive and innovative teaching practices through digital and the strengthening of the professional figure of teachers have been our priorities. 54 people including trainers, conductors, El Sistema experts, school operators, IT technicians, Moodle experts, music teachers met in transnational meetings, experimenting with innovative teaching activities and making other training sessions that involved 413 other teachers. 157 students participated in the mobility, including 24 students at risk of social marginalization (about 15% of the total) with a fair and equal involvement of the participants. The activities of the project were attended by 2356 students and members of the local community from schools of various levels and from more problematic centers such as centers for people with special needs, schools in urban suburbs, centers for the elderly people, with a strong impact at the regional level. 17900 people listened to the compositions made and performed by the students in the 6 concerts that took place within the Street Festivals. The collaboration with the Festivals makes possible an interesting connection between the educational institutions and the local community with a strong impact at the local level. The realization of 3 training meetings (Training for teachers), 9 European Street Campus (6 in presence in 2018-19 and 3 in virtual in 2020), many music workshops with the use of the multimedia platform for the experimentation of didactic activities between students from different countries, the implementation of the Moodle area for E-learning in order to create learning activity for students and training courses for teachers, research sessions during the campuses and the workshops carried out through questionnaires to students and observation forms, have led to concrete results such as a system of graphic signs for a simplified and inclusive musical notation, the creation of new digital musical tools called Paintagram and Basic Tracks Studio, the development of a new musical didactic methodology described into the Toolkit. The Toolkit is therefore the most important result and can be used both for creative and inclusive musical activities and as a method for replicating a process of integration between different formal and informal music teaching systems. In 2020, due to Covid 19, we promoted the compositions of students on social networks with 3 music videos produced with the audio recordings of students participating in the 3 virtual campuses. For the success of this new activity, we have also made a documentary that illustrates it. The 4 Multiplier Events in Serbia, Portugal, Italy and Belgium involved 264 trainers, operators in music education and institutions engaged in the use of music for social inclusion, from different European countries, with a impact at national level and the dissemination of intellectual results. The results are available on the www.pinocchio.band platform and on public course "Training for teachers" https://www.pinocchio.band/moodle/course/view.php?id=74 The long-term benefits are related to the advantages that teachers and students will have through the use of video lessons, tutorials, music games, lesson plans on the platform and the advantage that other organizations will have through the Toolkit, if they are interested in embarking on a process of integration of different music teaching systems.