SYNOPSIS

On the front line of a fierce war between enraged characters, Union appears, taking the warring parties by the hand and leading them to witness the scene of death and destruction that the conflict has produced. At this point, sadness takes the place of anger. The characters then reach a scene of life starting over, of reconstruction and rebirth, and joy returns to their faces. Through these steps, both material and emotional, they come to realise the desire and the need to unite around the symbol of peace in order to build a liveable and serene future. The work seeks to convey the maturing of a culture of peace that led to the formation of the European Union and to the formulation of Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union, as a foundation for building a better future.

 EDUCATIONAL/CREATIVE PROCESS

After an exploratory study of the values set out in the Treaty on European Union, the students chose, through a survey, the three they considered most important, identifying as their priorities, in order: peace, the fight against poverty, and freedom and justice. Later, by examining current events together in class, reading poetic texts such as “Arcobaleno” (“Rainbow”) by Rodari or “Ninnananna” (“Lullaby”) by Trilussa, poems in Spanish and listening to songs in English, they came to the conclusion that the most important “container value” — the one without which all the others cannot be achieved — is precisely peace.

After recounting how the horrors of the Second World War had led the European states, devastated by the conflict, to decide to work together, to cooperate and to aim for development based on solidarity rather than mutual oppression, the class decided to commemorate these significant moments as a warning not to repeat the same mistakes and horrors that history has shown us.

At that point the real collaborative work began, in which everyone — students and teachers alike — was able to make their own contribution: from creating the storyboard and the screenplay, to designing characters and settings, to composing and performing the background music, to creating caviardage on the theme of peace from the texts they had read, to editing the final product, for which we also involved a relative of one of the students.