The policemen and the dinosaur

The project was born to develop and facilitate the relationship between children and their imprisoned fathers, based on the assumption that art is a powerful instrument for the re-elaboration of reality, allowing children and their fathers to create imaginative spaces in which to meet, freely expressing and connecting with their emotions. In this way the father-child relationship is once again mediated by play and by the spontaneity of the artistic gesture, rather than by the stress and pressure of the traditional ‘closed-door’ encounter.

The artistic activities enable the children of the prisoners to transform the prison into a more familiar place in which to make their mark. The project enables time together between children and their fathers in the context of an art workshop conducted by psychologists, teachers and expert art therapists.

In 2017 and 2018 the project is being run at the Secondigliano prison in Naples and foresees a weekly drawing workshop for children waiting to meet with their jailed parent, creation of a dedicated space for father-child meetings mediated by drawing and a Support Group for the jailed fathers. From 2014 to 2017 AMI supported a project at the pedagogic area of the Opera prison, consisting of two drawing workshops a month for two groups of fathers and their children and two support groups: one for the jailed fathers and the other for the mothers who accompany the children to the prison.