Art and Creativity for Disadvantaged Students: Data and Reflections from the Italian National Plan of Arts

This paper intends to propose some reflections on the role of art- based educational practices in promoting inclusion processes at school. The reflection starts from the analysis of some data coming from the monitoring of the National Plan of Arts: an educational policy, promoted at national level since 2017, which has allowed hundred of schools to implement practical and theoretical actions for the improvement of artistic skills. From the comparison between the projects dedicated to volunteer or gifted children, with the projects aimed at disadvantaged children, some lines of development emerge that are useful for understanding how art and creativity can be used in educational and inclusiveness processes. From the results, it emerges that emotional involvement, interartistic projects as well as social aspects as intergenerational relationships and connection with different significant adults (e.g. artists) have been considered the most relevant means to shape artistic education for inclusive goals. In addition, direct production, in connection with contemporary youth cultures and digital media practices, have been releaved as innovative practices that teachers have used to bridge a top-down and bottom-up idea of arts, thus opening up to a not normative and inclusive idea of creativity.