Students’ voices on Media Dance ‘Artist Residencies’: an evaluative approach

Abstract

The paper bears witness to and analyses a research approach aimed at male and female students of secondary schools in the Turin suburbs participating in the Media Dance project, set up to experiment and promote innovative reflections and practices, in the encounter between the world of school and performing languages, through choreographic “Artist Residencies”.
After contextualising the project in a historical-artistic framework, the results of the evaluation of the impact of the performing arts on the school community in 2020-2021 are presented, in terms of impact on the learning of social issues, on transversal competences and on the well-being of male and female students. In this regard, survey instruments were developed to return participants’ voices, semi-structured, pre- and post-intervention questionnaires. The data highlight how the encounter with performance languages offered participants the opportunity to approach, through the body, the transformative potential of the aesthetic dimension.