Amélia Fitzgerald has been involved in children’s development through art for over ten years. From an early age, she found in the voluntary sector, with Quartiers de lumière and La Ruche, what the school world had failed to give her: self-confidence, the joy of transmitting and creating. She has just opened Créa’terre, a pottery workshop and place of well-being where she has been welcoming children and adults alike since 1 January. er March. Dominique Bellier
“I love to see how a child understands things, how they feel, when a gesture or a piece of knowledge is passed on to them. There’s no one way to learn. It’s limitless, really…” Amelia Fitzgerald knows what she’s talking about, having experienced first-hand the cruelty of an exclusionary school system, too prescriptive to be truly accessible to children, especially those in difficulty. If she hadn’t raised her head at 18, she would have remained forever among the system’s sacrifices.
The aspiring adult suddenly noticed that some of the children she looked after at La Ruche were behaving in a similar way to her when she was their age. She decided to undergo tests with a speech therapist, the results of which were unequivocal: she suffers from dyslexia. From that moment on, she regained her confidence, began to understand her intelligence of things, to distinguish between emotions, and discovered a great visual memory and assimilation skills using images and sound, in particular, that she would otherwise never have suspected.
She’s no longer the figure of failure she’s been made out to be throughout her years of schooling, through disappointing report cards, harassment and cruel mockery… She’s unstoppable, making up for lost time, learning by herself, discovering and passing on to the children in her care.
Amélia specializes in child development through art, taking the Facilit’art training courses run by the NGO TIPA (Terrain for interactive pedagogy through arts), to strengthen her skills as an educator. “That’s when I understood the power of creation. The TIPA trainers have changed my life and made me realize my worth.”
Multiplying her interventions in NGOs and private schools, she sometimes meets 1,000 children a week, teaching them skills through play, drawing, painting, mosaics and even gardening. She teaches them to learn.
In 2020, she trained in pottery, equipped herself and carried out her own experiments, before introducing this activity to her protégés. The success is astounding. In her brand-new workshop at Roches Brunes, the young thirty-something smiles as she takes stock of how far she’s come. At Créa’terre, your worries stay behind the door; you enjoy 2h30 of well-being, modelling clay shapes, testing glazes and marvelling at the surprises in store during firing.
