Early childhood, autumn and panellets: what to do with children this week

We have a new weekend ahead full of activities and all of them are already starting to take on the colors of autumn. As always, we have prepared a selection of plans for you to do with your children on October 23rd, 24th, and 25th, such as enjoying Canalla!, the new children's and youth book festival in Vic; participating in the Early Childhood Days in Cambrils, or taking an excursion to Montseny to visit the Autumn Fair and the Arbúcies Flabiol Festival.

We also propose a review of current events through the section To think about and we offer you the data and statements that have caught our attention the most.

Cultural and leisure activities

Vic premieres this weekend Canalla!, a cultural event dedicated to reading in the Catalan language, books, and illustration. From October 23rd to 25th, the streets of the capital of Osona will be filled with activities, workshops, exhibitions, and also book sales with a wide presence of publishing labels, bookstores, illustrators, magazines, and other professionals from the children's and youth literature sector.

A new festival promoted by the Vic City Council, the Pilarín Bayés Library, entities and organizations from the children's and youth literature sector such as bookstores, the school of graphic arts, and a reference contemporary arts center in the city.

Cambrils hosts the third edition of the Early Childhood Conference on October 22nd, 23rd, and 28th. A program aimed at families and citizens with different proposals for each day. Additionally, the activities on the 22nd and 28th will have a free childcare service with prior registration to encourage family attendance.

On Thursday, October 22nd, you can participate in the Community Family Space Let's build together the Early Childhood we want, which will be located at the Senior Citizens' Center. A space to build bonds, share, and learn about the city's community resources. On Friday, there will be a family afternoon with dynamic games and an artistic proposal by Marta Nolla at Parc del Pinaret. Finally, on October 28th, early childhood expert Romina Pérez Toldi will offer a talk aimed at families with children aged 0 to 3 on the importance of boundaries in the Cultural Center's assembly hall.

Every year, around All Saints' Day, Santa Coloma de Gramenet transforms into a fairground arts stage with the Passatge Insòlit Festival. In this 21st edition, you will find street performances of magic, puppetry, or circus. A total of 16 performing arts proposals that can be seen at the Torre Balldovina Auditorium, at Plaça Pau Casals, and in the Torre Balldovina Gardens, where the iconic fair with stalls and attractions will be set up.

One of the new features of this edition is the festival's commitment to Miniature Stories: four shows to enjoy in four small boxes, where every glance becomes an adventure. Most of the productions have free admission and those that are paid have popular prices between 3 and 6 euros. Head to Santa Coloma de Gramenet to experience a weekend of entertainment, fun, and also many surprises for all ages.

These days in every home we make panellets. For this reason, you cannot miss the fun family activity they are organizing this Saturday at Mas Colom de Casa Borges in Tàrrega. A theatrical visit to discover the history and all the secret corners of Mas Colom, which ends with a very sweet activity.

Your guides will be the ancestors of the house, who are called upon to recover a forgotten recipe, the enchanted panellets, made with ingredients that speak of tradition, territory, and memory.

Now that autumn is here, the time has come to see its burst of colors live. A good option is to go to Arbúcies, where this weekend they are celebrating a new edition of the Autumn Fair and the Flabiol Festival. Two proposals in one where you can enjoy products, flavors, and culture typical of the Montseny.

There will be a market for crafts and seasonal and local products, as well as an exhibition of traditional trades, culinary demonstrations, participatory workshops and concerts, talks and educational activities centered on the flabiol, one of the most emblematic instruments of Catalonia. For the little ones, there will also be parades and giants, family activities and much more.

If you are in Barcelona and are in the mood for autumn tales, at La Casa dels Entremesos they have scheduled a storytelling session where the main characters are chestnuts, mushrooms, and panellets. With Assumpte Mercader, a woman of her word, you will learn a lot of curiosities about this time of year, such as why there are trees that lose their leaves and others that do not.

Activity designed for children from three years old. The price is 6 euros and advance booking is required because capacity is limited. Do not miss out on a spot!

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona offers family activities that include a workshop and a visit to the galleries. This weekend you will be able to delve into Picasso's work from a physical and interpretive perspective.

In the workshop, you will imagine identities through the body, drawing, and observation. In a space of complicity, play, and discovery among family members and workshop participants, you will be able to play and create your own characters in a free and expressive way. To finish, you will take a tour of the museum's galleries to observe Picasso's most representative characters. Activity led by artist Glòria Vives and aimed at children from 6 years old.

The 21st edition of the Cornellà International Clown Festival - Charlie Rivel Memorial is already being experienced throughout the streets, theaters, schools, and other spaces in the city.

Until October 25th, up to 44 shows by 52 companies, some local and others international, have been scheduled in Cornellà de Llobregat. There will be galas and awards, and you will be able to see companies such as Cia. Albert Vinyes, the award-winning Txema Muñoz, or the French group Les Bleus de Travail.

With autumn, going to the cinema becomes more appealing. This Friday sees the release of Emilie and the Secret of the Storms, brought to you by the Catalan children's film distributor Rita & Luca Films. Emilie is an intrepid and sensitive eight-year-old girl who has just moved to the mountains with her family. She soon discovers that something strange is happening in the lush valley where she lives. During electrical storms, the village animals suffer inexplicable attacks and fall ill. The film's protagonist investigates the phenomenon with Manon, her neighbor, to whom she confesses a secret ability: the storms emit music that only she can hear.

An enigmatic adventure recommended for ages 6 and up that awakens the senses and invites us to reconnect with the languages of nature and with what makes us special. It is also accompanied by four stories about diversity, acceptance, and empathy.

Things that happen (to me)

The recommendation

This month of October, the short film La bici de la Lola (Lola's Bike) has been premiered, based on the illustrated book by Laia Pibernat Mir and Alba Barbé Serra. A piece that combines live-action scenes with animation scenes extracted from Judit Piella's drawings. On a stormy night, Lola's bike breaks. The next day, the protagonist of this story and her group of friends help her repair it with resources and imagination. It is only missing the bell, and this worries the girl a lot. One day at the beach, Lola locates it underwater when she reunites with her old bicycle. Together, they identify the abuse suffered at the hands of her uncle and find a way to explain it to her mother and ensure that the uncle does not return home.

The short film was made possible thanks to a Verkami and 16 sponsors, including Catalan and Basque Country town councils, production grants from the ICEC, the Island Council of Formentera, private companies, and entities such as the Catalan Association of Midwives. Tándem Lola SL, Belino Production, and Aragonés Media Consulting are part of the co-production. And the association of AMC with Antaviana VFX completes a team that has taken special care of the quality of the animation and post-production. La bici de la Lola will be presented at various festivals and will surely become an essential awareness tool to work on and help break the silence and impunity surrounding sexual violence against children.

Food for thought

For years now, we have been seeing intense migratory movements around the world that respond to complex structural, economic, and demographic factors. Societies are becoming increasingly diverse and also more unequal. This reality is reflected in the school segregation that occurs when there is an unbalanced and unequal distribution of students among schools in the same neighborhood or town, which causes the concentration of a high number of vulnerable students, whether for economic reasons, cultural origin, educational needs, or others. This is how schools of maximum complexity appear. In Catalonia, there are 350 of them.

This reality is the protagonist of the report The schools of the "others", which premiered last Sunday on the TV3 program 30 minuts. Its authors, Bernat Ferrer and Joan Salicrú, visit schools and high schools throughout Catalonia where school segregation is most evident (Granollers, Sabadell, Barcelona, Salt, Reus, Tortosa, Igualada, and Vic) and talk about it with teachers, families, and also with former students with immigrant parents but born in Catalonia. The causes of this phenomenon are clear: "local" families with university studies often choose their children's school not for the school's educational project but for its quota of vulnerable students, "the others." A benchmark measure that emerged with Decree 11/2021 of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the aim of combating school segregation after the Ombudsman made a formal complaint about it. The social, economic, and political consequences are shown very well in the report when they visit the neighboring country, France. School segregation causes worse academic results, a higher risk of school dropout, and, in the long run, a significant social fracture.

School segregation is a problem for everyone; that is why we need to invest more in public education and believe that only by betting on diversity will we obtain more social cohesion and better results for all.

He said

The data