23/07/2009
Vitoria-Gasteiz, July 23, 2009
- Sixty children between the ages of 8 and 11 have been having fun
learning about art, history and architecture during the month of July,
thanks to the arts and crafts camps organised by Fundación Catedral
Santa María. For a week, each group toured the church and wall,
creating bells, speaking with archaeologists and discovering how an
ailing building is restored.
The last of the three children’s camps organised in Santa María
Cathedral will be concluding tomorrow (Friday). All open
places in the three five-day camps offered in this first edition, which
ran Mondays to Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., were completely
filled.
The workshops have been conducted in two languages and allowed the
youngsters to go on brief tours to different points in the Cathedral.
After the tours, they engage in artistic activities that help them
understand the Cathedral’s problems, the work being carried out in it
and the importance of heritage conservation. Furthermore, their
creativity and imagination is stretched through these activities and
they take home their work in remembrance of their five-day stay in the
Cathedral.
With the collaboration of counsellors from the Fundación, the children
played and created a T-shirt with the Cathedral’s logo, which they wear
as a uniform all week long to identify them as a group. They have also
been able to chat with Fundación Director Juan Ignacio Lasagabaster,
who introduced them to the restoration works, and with technicians and
archaeologists at work. The children have toured the rehabilitated
stretch of the medieval city wall and made their own wall with recycled
materials; they imagine the polychromes in the portico and paint them
as they wish; they pretend to be bell ringers and have even made their
own bell, which they have named.
All in all, a very enriching experience for both the children who have
been taking part as well as the Fundación staff who have been working
with them and will be repeating in upcoming camps.