Massive educational experiences | Veronica Fiorito | TEDxRiodelaPlataED

In recent years there has been an explosion of educational audiovisual content, which makes children and teachers feel included. Veronica was one of the protagonists of this and tells us how some of those changes happened. She is the creator of cultural and educational experiences. After working in film and television production and directing, she was director of Canal Encuentro and PakaPaka where she developed content such as "The Amazing Zamba Excursion" that transcended the screen to become musicals, theme parks, museums, magazines, toys, video games, and more formats. She also participated in the creation of a university in the Province of San Luis, her hometown. She is currently the director of the Kirchner Cultural Center.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Every day I work with a team of people

that make the impossible happen.

To make the tail of a blue whale

stick out of the window
of one of the most iconic buildings

in Buenos Aires.

To make the girls in my country
want to be like Juana Azurduy,

a heroine of the
Latin American independence.

To make snow fall inside a huge theater

over boys and girls
who had never seen snowing.

To make whole families
come together in front of a screen

to learn about the number pi,

about Plato's Myth of the Cave,

or about the history
of state-sponsored terrorism

with the same interest they used to watch
an entertainment show before.

Things that seemed impossible yesterday
are transformations today.

In my office
at the Centro Cultural Kirchner,

a space dedicated to art and culture,
I have a window.

From there, I invite those
who visit me to look out with me.

That window, for the sky,
reminds me of my childhood.

I'm from San Luis.

There you can see the most pristine skies
and the most beautiful clouds.

The first time I looked
I was not aware of that.

I grew up in a house that
was school as well.

A "school home" run by my mom.

When I was a girl, from my window
I'd look at the yard and see a slide.

That yard, as well,
was the school's playground.

And the slide wasn't just mine,

it was the slide
of a lot of boys and girls.

If I went out into the yard and looked
inside I'd see my house.

But there were also chalks, games, desks.

What for others was just a blackboard,

for me, it meant the afternoon
when we had hung it.

All the time I witnessed
a set of actions

supported mostly by women:
mothers, grandmothers, janitors,

the best managers of getting things done.

For me, learning, playing, doing,
was always in community.

Although at a time of the day
my house-school ran out of people,

in that empty space I knew
that everything was going to happen again

and that the next day my house
would become something else

thanks to the work of all the people
that made the school possible.

I didn't know this at the time,

but as a child, I learned to look
at reality in a different way.

I understood it many years later
when I was called to think about

creating Canal Encuentro,
as part of an educational project.

A public television channel.

Many of us who started with the channel

weren't from the capital of the country.

We were coming
from different provinces:

San Luis, Cordoba, Salta, Misiones.

And our vision came with us.

What we achieved with the team
of Encuentro, mostly women,

was to transform educational television
through those visions.

We created a screen in which each region
could display their own story.

We were used to watching
boring documentaries,

that were zero engaging,

with hosts who didn't talk
like Argentineans,

with images from other countries.

In Canal Encuentro we started
to show the face of the teachers

and the kids who were attending a school
in Santiago del Estero,

or a rural school
in Barranqueras, Chaco.

Or a kindergarten in Alumine, Neuquen.

In half-hour episodes
we help dignify crafts and trades.

We teach how to lay tiles,

work on a Criollo loom,

install thermal switches,
and design trousers.

We teach philosophy through music.

And music with Encuentro in the studio.

And science with closeness.

A new way to do and watch TV
was being born.

New content, new ways.

The channel won prestige and
the recognition of the audience.

Soon afterward, Encuentro managed
to turn public audiovisual production

into a tool for raising
appreciation and inclusion.

Showing another possible image
of this that we are as a nation.

Something had changed in Argentina

in the conception of public policy

and that transformation
was also happening on TV.

They were years of huge energy,
of great learning,

of a great work synergy
and collective creation

that allowed us to produce
quality content.

Thanks to Encuentro
we could create another channel.

This time for children: PakaPaka.

PakaPaka, the power of imagination,

was the result of the work
of many, highly talented people.

Producers, educators,
screenwriters, performers,

cartoonists, editors, animators,
public workers.

In this project,

we focused on three privileged areas
for transformation:

childhood, education and culture.

We put the kids at the center.

The secret was that,
from the public space, from the state,

and from an educational project,

we worked every day
producing for inclusion,

educating for equality,

and providing access
to quality content.

A few years later, I was able to take
to San Luis all that experience.

That's how Juan and Pascual were born,
two animated characters, twins,

who talked like me,
eat watermelon like me,

have siesta,

and are friends with a squirting wind
that blows very hard.

From this cross-platform project
Juan and Pascual

made our boys and girls
from San Luis

learn from their own experience,

with the landscapes, the history,
and the skies that surround them.

All this seemed impossible.

Creation through art and culture
can lead to collective transformation.

It's not about personal talent.

What I learned at my home-school
when I was a child, marked my way.

I would look at the empty space

and I knew that this space
could be transformed again.

Thanks to that community of women

I learned that when a team of people

works with conviction and commitment

the impossible becomes possible.

Since the pandemic arrived to Argentina,

I go to work every day
to the Centro Cultural Kirchner.

Today, where the whale came out
through the window, is empty.

It lacks their culture workers,

the visitors, the artists, the community.

I look through that window
and I see a city in pause.

In pause, I go back to my life.

I repeat all the time the same action
for as long as I can remember

as if I were a camera myself.

I see those who surrounded me
in that house, in that yard,

those who had to have a place
in TV productions

that were until then denied.

Those who teamed up with me
and made it possible.

My job is to look at others
see their potential,

that spark that turns them on,
the one we get together

and from where we build together.

This empty space presents us
a new opportunity,

a unique challenge to make, to create.

Once again we can
make the impossible possible.

Let's build a future full of encounters

with new stories told in our voices,

let's transform reality again,

being freer, closer, more humane.