L’abilitazione produttiva della Colonia-Scuola ‘A. Marro’ nella prima metà del Novecento

[Autom. eng. transl.] On June 15, 1921, the “Antonio Marro” School-College was inaugurated in Reggio Emilia, intended to accommodate some of those mentally retarded children and young people who still crowded the mental hospitals in the area, primarily the adjacent “San Lazzaro,” to which the new institution was administratively and managerially linked. Like similar initiatives implemented in the same period throughout the country, the Colony presented itself as a place in which medical-assistance and pedagogical interventions worked in harmony for the general well-being of the young guests. Cared for physically, educated in morals and equipped with the basic elements of knowledge, they for the first time became protagonists of a path of personal redemption, although – as is known – the mental-communal stigma would not abandon them even once they were discharged from the Institute. In this context, both for the purposes of individual training and for those of social utility, professional literacy was a primary concern of Dr. Maria Del Rio, director of the Colony, and, to a broader extent, of the entire Board of Directors of the psychiatric hospital. In fact, the mentally retarded guests were introduced to learning various trades, related to tailoring, shoemaking and basket making for the males, and embroidery and weaving for the females. Using mainly the material preserved in the Archives of the former Psychiatric Hospital “San Lazzaro” in Reggio Emilia, the investigation aims to bring to light the considerations underlying the professional proposal within the “Antonio Marro” Colony-School in its first two decades of activity. A particular focus is placed on the “Ars Canusina” laboratory, introduced in the early 1930s for girls with mental disabilities. Since it was a refined and original form of artistic craftsmanship, which involved the reproduction of ornamental motifs typical of the Matildic era on various materials, such as fabric, ceramics, leather and wrought iron, it required particular training, which this contribution aims to account for, in order to explore its pedagogical elements.