By Alberto Lenz – Director, Bellas Artes Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez El Nigromante INBA San Miguel de Allende
The Centro Cultural El Nigromante, of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, joined efforts and resources with the Children´s Art Foundation to give free art workshops to children in low income communities of San Miguel de Allende. In so doing, we seek to convey message of art to these deprived children who are full of it, in areas of poverty in which the shortcomings of all kinds are serious and obvious. But also, first and foremost, we want to sow in them the seeds of creativity, imagination and self esteem, so endowed with them, these children are then engines of social change.
The compilation of drawings presented in this book focuses on the theme of nature and the city in the eyes of these children. It is interesting to observe how, for the children who live on the outskirts of the urban area, nature is still a place of beauty and color, free and happy encounter with birds, plants and insects. The city, almost always identified with the emblematic building of the parish, is instead a world somewhat cold and rigid, with empty streets devoid of animals or people, only houses and more houses.
It is possible that with these drawings and beautiful stories that accompany them, these children instead give us all a profound lesson.
