Active participation of the public is key to Marinella Senatore’s art practice. Wherever she is invited Marinella Senatore involves entire communities in her projects, bringing each individual to tap into their creative potential and reconstruct a dialogue between oral history, culture and social structures.

In 2013 she established The School of Narrative Dance, a nomadic, free school offering an alternative educational programme based on emancipation and self-teaching. The project has no fixed site, taking on different forms depending on the spaces it temporarily occupies. The focus of the multidisciplinary school is narration, offering an extensive range of ‘experiences’ and teaching sessions on literature, oral history, carpentry, art history, craftwork, photography, arithmetic, theatre, dance, and so on. The school brings together several groups and communities to celebrate the great diversity of skills and talents each participant can bring to the project and develop. Thousands of individuals in over seven countries have already taken part in the school, including political activists, crafts people, non-literate learners, students, homemakers, trade unions, mutual benefit societies, pensioners and teachers. 

Marinella Senatore will be inviting local residents of Aubervilliers to join this open platform. The project will involve workshops open to all, exploring themes such as ‘drama’, ‘language and film’, ‘reading and writing’, ‘oral history’. The aim is to encourage local residents to pool their resources and activities, to reflect on the ‘commons’ through mutual learning situations and to work towards co-producing an artwork whose form will be shaped by the participants themselves (a film? a parade? a radio programme?)…

 
To begin this collaborative project, Marinella had presented the school and workshops Saturday 23rd January 2016 at 2:00 pm on the occasion of an Open Day and over a light meal.