Project

Valenii de Munte is a town representative of the 19th and early 20th centuries’ teaching approach in Romania. Here, the eminent historian Nicolae Iorga, at the beginning of the last century, initiated a Popular University and a School of Forgotten Arts, with the purpose of rehabilitating the folk tradition.
Valenii de Munte was selected by the Time Maps team not only to continue in the 21st century Iorga’s original ideas behind the School of Forgotten Arts, but to try to use the know how gained from the project experiments in the particular case of, and provide help to, the school children with various cognitive handicaps from the local Gymnasium Special School.
To this end a series of traditional technologies were adapted, and presented in an extremely simple manner, to facilitate the children’s understanding and ability to reproduce them, thus leading to art therapy. The goal was to transmit to the children simple technological operations of medium complexity pertaining to the engraving of glass and iron processing, both of which were specific to the area during the last two centuries. A team of very enthusiastic teachers from the school participated in the workshops alongside the Time Maps team.
As part of its curriculum the Gymnasium School provides a series of specialized classes for iron processing and for computer use, which will help the team implement the project in this particular context.

This work with simplified technologies and with art will be continued by the NUA after the completion of the project, by developing courses focused on art therapy.