The aim of the project is to introduce a High Level School Institution in the field of Visual Art and Music, that we will call School of the Arts. The place where the School will born is a vast territory of Bolivia , which needs this kind of disciplines, because it is completely without access. The necessity of this kind of school is so urgent in accord with the New Reorganization of the Secondary School, where is expected the new technical orientation in music and visual art.

Yu can see: La enseñanza del textil guaraní y su importancia para el territorio

The path of the School of Art and Music

The School was founded in 2007 by the will of Father Tarcisio, a Franciscan of the Order of Friars Minor, in Bolivia since 1976 and the Tuscan visual artist, Mimmo Roselli, present in Bolivia annually, about two months a year, from 1985. I will refer only to the path of the musical part of the School, which was born as a School of strings in three communities of Guaranì ethnicity: Santa Rosa de Cuevo, Palmarito and Ipitacito del Monte, in the South-East of Bolivia. The teachers of the Chaco School have all studied at the Musical Institute of Urubichà, about 1000 km away from our territories After 4 years from the beginning of the Music School, talking with the friends of the Music School of Prato in the figure of its Director, Maestro Paolo Ponsecchi, the violinist, Maestro Marco Facchini and the cellist, Maestro Filippo Burchietti, we begin a collaboration between the two schools with the aim of improving the artistic quality of Bolivian musicians. This collaboration is realized starting from 2011 with the arrival in Italy of 6 musicians, the Director of the School of Palmarito, Choir Master Adelina Anori, with 4 violinists and 1 cello who worked for a month with Maestro Facchini and Maestro Burchietti. integrating with the orchestra of the students of the Prato School. At the end of the internship month, two concerts were held as part of the Zipoli Festival where Bolivian students played with the orchestra of the Prato School in the Church of San Francesco (https://www.istitutodeglinnocenti.it/content/prato-giovani-musicisti-boliviani-guaran%C3%AC, La ternura india de Zipoli: un incontro fra due mondi; http://santarosadecuevo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/el-pan-y-el-arte.pdf; http://festivalzipoli.it/resources/Stampa/NazionePO11XI11.jpg; ) and in the Magnolfi Theater in the city of Prato (see photographic documentation and the Rai service, http://www.rai.it/dl/tgr/regioni/PublishingBlock-0f7d1998- 654b-4a4d-8455-2d2a1121bfb2.html?idVideo=ContentItem-8dc20721-c1b0-4251-81db- c55ecebdfc61&idArchivio=Settimanale).

One year later the masters Burchietti and Facchini were invited to Bolivia for about a month, working with the students of the three branches of the Chaco School which ended with a concert in the Church of Gutierrez (see photos and various small videos + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3UvWkAC-xk).

In 2013 the Prato Music School always welcomes two violinists for a month, one the Dir. Of the Santa Rosa branch and one of the Urubichà School, who will participate in the Zipoli Festival of that year, under the Dir. Del Maestro Gabriele Giacomelli , who, in addition to the two Bolivian violinists, invites the musicologist P. Piotr Nawrot, who lives in Bolivia, a great expert in the music of Domenico Zipoli and Director of the Zipoli Archive of the city of Concepcion (http://comunicati.comune.prato.it/generali/?action=dettaglio&comunicato=14201300001782; http://santarosadecuevo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/programma-7-dicembre-zipoli.pdf; http://met.provincia.fi.it/news.aspx?n=161075;http://festivalzipoli.it/resources/Stampa/NazionePO15XI13.jpg;http://festivalzipoli.it/resources/Stampa/ToscanaOggi21XI13.jpg;http://festivalzipoli.it/resources/Stampa/Tirreno20XI13.pdf; http://festivalzipoli.it/resources/Stampa/NazionePO20XI13.jpg)

This path with the Music School of Prato has been of great importance for the artistic evolution of our school of Chaco, which through the comparison with other musical realities and the musical guidance of P. Piotr Nawrot, has reached good levels of execution, thanks to which she was invited to the Festival de Musica Barrocca y Renacentista, in editions:

*2014(http://www.amicidelpopologuarani.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=147; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtO9H4G2kQ&t=20s);

*2016(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXYltX5uer8;

*2018 (www.santarosadecuevo.org)

The Santa Rosa Festival, International Festival of Arts, Dir. Artistico Mimmo Roselli, was born in 2016 and until 2018 is produced at the same time as the Festival de Musica Barrocca y Renacentista, Art Dir. Piotr Nawrot. In 2019 an autonomous journey begins also because it is a Festival of Contemporary Art and Our School produces a concert based on music by Ennio Morricone, author of the music of the film Mission, which describes very well the Jesuit missions, the indigenous peoples, essentially the Guaranì and the territory where these populations lived. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i82F-fCtmTk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i-fapIJEVc).

Also in 2019 our School in the Palmarito-Santa Rosa Choir formation with a nucleus of the Orquesta Urubichà is invited to give a concert in Rome for the Synod of Amazonia on October 19th. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqnOxEXgWmU; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-OnG9lB-qE&t=891s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLCcnEEizjk&t=951s)

And to sing, the Palmarito-Santa Rosa-Urubichà Choir, in the Papal Mass on 20 October (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KILR0kF2fy0&t=3213s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rR7NKNBO68&t=3357s)

The journey continues in Poland (https://www.kere.it/faro-di-punta-sophia-it.php).

And then again in Italy with concerts in Casal Monferrato, Piedmont, and in Florence, Tuscany, at the Fiesole Music School, Palazzo Vecchio and the Church of Ognissanti (see minivideo and photos).

The founder of the School, P. Tarcisio Ciabatti ofm, accompanies us in this activity, with the spirit and with his physical presence, the engine in Bolivia of all these wonderful activities.

Towards the end of 2019 we receive news from the CEI that the project to strengthen our School has been approved and various activities are starting to be planned:

a) Group of young people who for two years will attend the Renè Moreno University of Art in Santa Cruz, to train these young people in the visual arts and acquire professors in these subjects

b) Programming of study courses in Music and Visual Arts in the Cordillera Region (Camiri, Cuevo, Boyuibe) and the Gran Chaco Region (Villamontes), with Masters from our Escuela de Arte y Musica del Chaco who organize these courses also in coordination with the new House of Culture of Camiri.

c) Increasing collaboration between the School and autonomous art groups in the Communities. The one already activated is with the Apirai Guasu group of Itanambikua.

d) Preparation of the Santa Rosa Festival for the year 2021 with production of shows and exhibitions that will be in Santa Rosa during the Festival, but which will also have production in other cities, especially Santa Cruz and Tarija.

e) Activation of Erasmus projects between Italy and Bolivia both in the musical field (with the famous Music School of Fiesole) and in the field of visual arts with the prestigious Porta Romana Art Institute in Florence. An exchange of food culture was beginning to be produced between Italy and Bolivia through the activation of programs with the Hotel School of Florence.

Unfortunately, the wave of Covid-19 has for now blocked all programming. We all hope these activities can resume promptly.

Italy / Bolivia, August 2020

Mimmo Roselli

Artist, Founder and International Coordinator of the School