Young People’s Participation. Группа авторов
and the creation of an authentically independent and free cultural offer. More specifically, we were able to group the organised events into three main types of activities:
•Open workshops: series of meetings through which the participants engage in a collective research/reflection aimed at critically assessing the complexity of a given social issue (for example, housing problems). This phase of collective reflection informs a subsequent practical phase of cultural and artistic self-production culminating in a final moment of open restitution of the results.
•Thematic readings: performative readings of classic and self-produced texts and poems on a given topic of political relevance.
•External collaborations: co-organisation of theatrical performances, presentation of books in the presence of authors, staging of artistic exhibitions in shared curatorship.
In the following section, a description of some of the events organised by Quaderni Urbani is used to exemplify these different practices.
Project work and its social impact
Metropolitan Snapshots (open workshop, May 2018)
In the past five years the city of Bologna has undergone a process of massive touristification. Investing in the food economy and in the transport sectors (and particularly in the expansion of the airport), the local government is trying to make Bologna an increasingly attractive destination for tourists. In so doing, the municipality has given ample room for manoeuvre to businesses ready to profit from the city’s transformation. However, no attention has been paid to the fact that an unmanaged tourist flow causes a radical alteration of the physical and social morphology of the city. In Bologna, in particular, this uncontrolled tourism has produced, in addition to the proliferation of countless boutiques and megastores where local food products are sold at embarrassingly high prices, a housing crisis of devastating impact. It is the city centre that has been mainly affected and particularly the student population, which is now struggling to find affordable housing due to the conversion into Airbnb lets of about 1,700 apartments (Gentile et al, 2018).
The open workshop Metropolitan Snapshots was Quaderni Urbani’s response to this housing crisis. The workshop aimed at being an opportunity to reflect on the ability of mass tourism to change the face of the city and to make an explicit call to act in the opposite direction. We found social photography to be the most incisive artistic medium for denouncing the transformation of the city, as well as the most effective means to win back the authentic soul of the city. We divided the work into three moments. First, we organised an initial briefing, in which we debated the narrative criteria of street photography, as well as its ability to portray the surrounding environment. Second, we organised a ten-day ‘photographic relay’, which saw the participants share and pass from one to another some analogue cameras. These were used to portray, in their neighbourhoods, places and people with a significant social or historical value. Finally, we created an exhibition of the shots that were also placed on a map of the centre of Bologna with the aim of revealing an alternative cartography of the city where the places of greatest social importance were highlighted.
The external participation in our first workshop and its results went well beyond our expectations. In fact, the workshop not only fostered the rediscovery of Bologna and its social composition, but also stimulated a collective process of awareness of the implications of our living together in a multi-ethnic and plural urban space. The ultimate message that our work aspired to convey? That travelling in already planned and standardised tourist routes means becoming part of a mechanism working for the profit of a few, as well as harming those who inhabit and animate the city every day.
Voices for Mediterranea (thematic reading, April 2019)
Over the past two years, every government that has ruled Italy has pursued migration policies centred on rejection of migrants and closures of borders. The adopted institutional policies have also promoted a criminalisation of humanitarian intervention. The numerous non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have helped to mitigate the already dramatic death toll of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea have been threatened with financial penalties and criminal measures. This has led to the almost total disappearance of NGOs in the central Mediterranean, thereby exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe we have witnessed over the past decade.
In this context, Làbas and Quaderni Urbani have become co-funders of the courageous operation of Mediterranea Saving Humans (Mediterranea). This operation arose from the indignation fostered in us by the repressive and racist measures enacted by political institutions. Mediterranea was born as an enlarged umbrella association of different political groups and civic associations. Through international crowdfunding, the project has brought two boats back into the Mediterranean. Having an Italian flag, the two boats are partially spared from the restrictive measures applied to NGOs’ boats. In the span of eight months, Mediterranea’s boats have been involved in seven patrol missions in the Strait of Sicily. To date, the operation has rescued 237 people. The beginning of this mission led Quaderni Urbani to enlist in what we have called the ‘land crew’. The land crew of Mediterranea has the task of spreading as much as possible the message of the project, of raising funds, and of empowering civil society to recognise the value of humanity. Although simple and basic, this value has assumed traits of heroism in a time marked by an increasing barbarisation of the public debate.
Taking advantage of our previous experience with the social library, we first took care of the management of a private library that was donated to us. The books of this library were sold to finance the mission. We organised a weekly ‘book banquet’ aimed at selling as well as collecting books and magazines. Through the resources obtained by selling the books we have brought a considerable economic contribution to Mediterranea and the banquet has also been an opportunity to talk about the operation and activate new forces around it.
We also sought to amplify the narrative power of the operation, by organising public thematic readings of some texts that our comrades had written. The reading Voices for Mediterranea gathered two types of texts: ‘logbooks’, that is, testimonies of direct experiences of navigation and rescue in the Strait of Sicily, and ‘land journals’, written by comrades who, like ourselves, had participated in the land crew.
The success of the event was huge. During 2019 we were asked to organise this thematic reading more than four times and the logbooks and journals of Mediterranea will soon published by Quaderni Urbani. It is not intended for these texts to be simply a literary exercise. On the contrary, they are born to witness and to communicate the personal efforts and political intentions entailed in a mission aimed at saving human lives from death at sea. In this way a wonderful and powerful interweaving of action and art is realised. This form of art gives recognition to the generous effort of those who jeopardise their physical and legal safety to fight against inhumanity and disengagement. Through these readings we thus ambitiously sought to turn our voices into megaphones.
Examples of external collaborations (2018–19)
Over the years, Quaderni Urbani has managed to create and diffuse an independent and free cultural offering, also thanks to the collaborations developed with other artistic and political groups animated by the same values. We have asked each of our collaborators to take an unequivocal position with respect to the issues we consider decisive, such as the anti-sexist and anti-racist nature of our activities.
In relation to these external collaborations, a particularly interesting example is that of the meetings with students of the Academy of Fine Arts, which have allowed an exchange of information and mutual training on the difficulties experienced by those who wish to make a living through art. By using our spaces within Làbas as an ‘open atelier’, we have sought to meet the needs of young emerging artists of the city of Bologna by enabling them to use the open atelier as a free exhibition space. Through the open atelier we have sought to spare art from commodification and to open up opportunities for critical discussion on the problems of independent culture.
During the event Avant-Punk, organised in partnership with the group LaZecca (a political and cultural collective working mostly through music), we promoted an unusual meeting between the surrealist