The result of interdisciplinary research conducted over a period of three years, the Colony-School ‘Ars Canusina’ project describes the art therapy experience of the ‘A. Marro’ Colony-School, whose story took place almost entirely in a Europe intimidated by the irrational policies of totalitarian regimes and the heinous project of «curing the race, starting with maternity and childhood».

Founded in 1921 within the «San Lazzaro» Psychiatric Hospital in Reggio Emilia, the boarding school was a truly global institution: school, craft workshop, healthcare centre and a place where hundreds of children – despite the shortcomings of their families and the deficiency of the other welfare organisations at that time – were able to significantly improve their conditions and in many cases be included in social life.

In a cultural context still characterised by positivist concepts that placed psychiatric patients in a condition of exclusion and confinement, an organised team of doctors, nurses, educators, teachers, artists and artisans, led by Maria Bertolani Del Rio (1892-1978), developed a treatment method that was in many ways absolutely pioneering.

An important part of the therapy followed in the Colony-School was, in fact, the artisanal and artistic application of a true ‘ornamental alphabet’ based on the motifs of Reggio Emilia Romanesque art: familiar signs in the imagination of children and young people who found a way to express an innate need for harmony and ‘regularity’, gradually acquiring a calmer, more stable and orderly sense of their sensory and human experience.

Overlooked by psycho-pedagogical reflection in the second half of the 20th century, but surviving as a form of elegant local craftsmanship, Ars Canusina today offers, above all, an exemplary reflection on the value of creativity, beyond the limits imposed by ideologies, whatever their origin.

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