The young children selected by Father Mario Ghezzi from villages and from the streets arrive at the Art Shop. They are seven boys and a small girl, all of them without any kind of work, without a hope for the future. Some of them have attended primary school but two are illiterate and the youngest boy is deaf and dumb. They look frightened at this large foreigner who draws forms in the air and, with his strong hands, takes his silver wire and bends it with ease. Only a few of the children can do the same, the youngest need help from their companions. It is easier once the wire has been bent: they forge it on the iron cylinder to flatten it, shape the spirals with pliers and polish the finished object with the machine until it shines like a ray of moonlight on the Mekong. In January 2010 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, an artist from Levanto, Italy, Renzo Bighetti, and a group of very young children who have always lived in very difficult situations, launched The Knot, a Project of Social Design.

We phoned Renzo from Cambodia one evening to ask him to come and teach a group of children. Our daughter Martina, whom Bighetti knew as a small child and watched grow up summer after summer in Levanto, has been working in Cambodia for years helping disadvantaged women and children - unfortunately very many - in a very poor country, which is becoming one of the preferred destinations for sex tourism. Renzo immediately accepted without even asking how, when or why. He was the right person for what we had in mind: not simply a relief service, which often ends up creating a dependence on humanitarian aid - but a training project that would put the manual skills of the local population to good use, and teach a trade that would ensure economic independence by producing objects that are appealing to the global market rather than the traditional ethnic objects which have already saturated all of the western markets. And, furthermore, a project that, thanks to the pride that comes from producing something of beauty, would help the children to create a new positive sense of identity after a life without incentives and experiences.

Bighetti is an artist and a man of the sea and it is from the sea that he finds inspiration for his work. He inherited dexterity and familiarity with materials from his father, a carpenter. He strokes wood with the same affection that he brushes a child's head and the children gather around this man who is always coming up with a new game. On the beach, he gathers roots, pieces of wood and shells from the beach and transforms them into sculptures, objects and jewelry that he then sells in Levanto in his gallery, an ideal meeting place for anyone looking for something more than the usual ice cream on the seafront. It was certainly not easy to teach without sharing even a common language with the students, but "u Bighetti" as he is called by his fellow villagers, knew how to instantly win the hearts of these children. Seven boys and one girl arrived at the laboratory the first day with neither curiosity nor a smile. They looked distrustfully at this big man who spoke in an unknown language. They spoke only Khmer and Renzo just a few words of English. Drawing on the blackboard and making signs in the air, he smiles and jokes, but he knows how to speak with his heart and they understand; by evening they smile timidly as they leave.

At the end of the course the children laugh, they look at him with admiration, follow his instructions faithfully and their eyes fill with light when they turn around in their hands the object they have now completed; they confront it with the one Renzo has made. It is exactly like their master's. They feel a bit like artists as well. This is not the first time that Bighetti has been a teacher, but this was certainly the first time he taught children so different because of their cultures and experiences.

"This time I did not speak about art, I tried to transmit sensations, starting with who I am - I think of myself as a good artisan - and I tried to give suggestions, teach shortcuts, each one the fruit of years of work and many mistakes and pieces thrown away. All of this in a few weeks with children of another culture, an Oriental culture.

Before leaving Italy I had prepared a working programme of everything I had to do and say, but then, once I was there, with little chance of having a translator, I improvised with the blackboard and gestures and little by little I felt like it was working and the children started to learn. To tell about the shape, the light that it creates, to teach someone to imagine a shape as something that grows within yourself and that appears to you as a transparency, is not easy.

When you phoned me from Cambodia to propose the project, the connection was bad, it was hard to understand anything, but something clicked inside me: curiosity, challenge, the desire for something new, to put myself into question.

When you phoned me from Cambodia to propose the project, the phone connection was bad, but something clicked inside me: curiosity, challenge, the desire for something new, and to question myself. Anyway I felt reassured by your presence and experience with the East. I knew I had to talk about and teach things that are within me and it seemed apparently easy, but when I got back to Italy the scale told me I'd lost five kilos!

The relationship with the children was wonderful; they put their faith in me and let themselves be guided. They needed to be motivated, to become the pulse of the project. I had to get them to feel that it was their project and that they are capable of managing it.

I celebrated my sixty-second birthday with them and it was fantastic, perhaps the best birthday I've ever had. They welcomed me in the morning with a wreath of flowers and in the evening I took them out to dinner. For most of them it was the first time they had set foot in a restaurant.

I wanted to give these children my design - a bowline knot - because I believe in solidarity and because I believe that a good artisan can always get by in life. I hope that by putting something new in their hands and having explained it to them and given it to them they will have the opportunity to improve their lives. I really hope that the project continues, I believe in it, and I'm ready to go back to Phnom Penh if my skills were needed in starting up a laboratory that would be run by them.

I did not only teach, I also learned a great deal from this experience. I saw things that I would rather have never seen, but this, too, is learning. We find something new without looking for it, it is inside us and even if you don't know it, it comes out when you least expect it."