Arts & Children: Rights Charter

Eighteen principles to state the right of all children, all over the world, to enjoy art and culture. This is the content of the Charter, created by La Baracca – Testoni Ragazzi together with a group of teachers and parents.

Charter of Children’s Rights to Art and Culture

Children have the right:
1 to access art in all its forms: theatre, music, dance, literature, poetry, cinema, visual and multimedia arts

2 to experience artistic languages as “fundamental knowledge”

3 to be part of artistic processes that nurture their emotional intelligence helping them to develop sensitivity and competence in harmony

4 to develop, through their relationship with the arts, their physical, symbolic and cognitive intelligence

5 to enjoy high-quality artistic products, specifically created by professionals for each different age-group

6 to have a relationship with arts and culture as sensitive and competent “subjects” not as “consumers”

7 to attend the town’s artistic and cultural institutions, both with family and school, in order to discover and experience what the area offers them

8 to take part in artistic and cultural events on a regular, not random, basis during their school and pre-school life

9 to share the pleasure of the artistic experience with their families

10 to have an integrated system between school and artistic and cultural institutions, because only a constant interaction between them can offer a vibrant living culture

11 to attend museums, theatres, libraries, cinemas and other cultural and performance venues together with their schoolmates

12 to experience art and culture guided by their teachers, necessary mediators who can support and give value to their perceptions

13 to a lay culture that respects diversity

14 to integration, if they are migrants, which can be achieved by accessing and sharing the artistic and cultural heritage of the community in which they live

15 to artistic and cultural projects devised in consideration of their different abilities

16 to adequate structures for each different age-group

17 to a school system allowing them to access a widespread and public culture

18 to be given the opportunity to take part in the artistic and cultural initiatives of their town, regardless of their social and economic standing, because all children have the right to art and culture