MadreProject, thinking with bread
Basic information
Project Title
MadreProject, thinking with bread
Full project title
A new model of hybrid cultural space focusing on the relationship with bread to re-enchant the world
Category
Regaining a sense of belonging
Project Description
Thinking with bread, as the anthropologist Tim Ingold - a guest lecturer in Milan last September - encourages us to do, means being realistic. Instead of aiming for a digital post-humanism, we must aim for a post-digital humanism, because human beings derive bread from the Earth: from bread they learn to take responsibility for the Earth.
MadreProject is thus a path of regeneration toward the new time of bread, a renewed enchantment of the world.
MadreProject is thus a path of regeneration toward the new time of bread, a renewed enchantment of the world.
Geographical Scope
Local
Project Region
Milan, Italy
Urban or rural issues
It addresses urban-rural linkages
Physical or other transformations
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
EU Programme or fund
No
Description of the project
Summary
MadreProject, thinking with bread, is a process of relationship with bread. Bread is chosen as a symbol of the Chiaravalle-Vettabbia-Corvetto area in Milan, the ancient cradle of European agriculture, thanks to the millenary work of Cistercian monks. For us, bread has gradually become a medium to develop a sense of identity and belonging to places and to encourage the involvement of local communities in urban regeneration processes aimed at improving the quality of the cultural and socio-economic dynamics of the place.
“Bread embraces the entire history of mankind: from the distant day when our ancestors were amazed by the symmetry of the grains on the ear, to the present day, when billions of human beings still go hungry and dream of bread, while others consume and waste it in abundance. On the shores of the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia to the tables of the entire world, bread has been the seal of culture”. Predrag Matvejevic
General objectives:
Terzo Paesaggio evolves culture-based urban regeneration practices through the prototyping of a new model of a cultural centre with a hybrid character, oriented towards cultural crossover and located in the Milanese suburb of Chiaravalle, ancient cradle of European agriculture abandoned by modernity, which today can be revived as an idea of the city of the future.
Specific objectives:
a public program open to the city, an educational pact involving a whole territory, a process of soil regeneration and biodiversity increase, a learning path for aspiring bread entrepreneurs.
“Bread embraces the entire history of mankind: from the distant day when our ancestors were amazed by the symmetry of the grains on the ear, to the present day, when billions of human beings still go hungry and dream of bread, while others consume and waste it in abundance. On the shores of the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia to the tables of the entire world, bread has been the seal of culture”. Predrag Matvejevic
General objectives:
Terzo Paesaggio evolves culture-based urban regeneration practices through the prototyping of a new model of a cultural centre with a hybrid character, oriented towards cultural crossover and located in the Milanese suburb of Chiaravalle, ancient cradle of European agriculture abandoned by modernity, which today can be revived as an idea of the city of the future.
Specific objectives:
a public program open to the city, an educational pact involving a whole territory, a process of soil regeneration and biodiversity increase, a learning path for aspiring bread entrepreneurs.
Key objectives for sustainability
Madre Project develops a public programme involving citizenship, students, children and families. It creates a productive and collaborative ecosystem between cultural institutions, research centres, enterprises, non-profit organisations and policymakers. The project regenerates the desertified agricultural land of the city of Milan, in the Corvetto-Vettabbia- Chiaravalle area, cultivating wheat for the production of the first agricultural bread from the city of Milan.
MadreProject proposes a model of education that trains people to preserve their environment and to acknowledge the different local specificities and resources of a territory. However, it goes further in introducing learnings on systemic thinking and human ecology, which, together with practical activities, could change the participants’ worldviews and behaviors, leading to the training of entrepreneurs and breadmakers of the future who are able to create circular processes to produce a positive social, economic and environmental impact through their sustainable activities and business.
In addition, the project integrates a plan for the regeneration of 10 hectares of abandoned agricultural fields, rescued from desertification and speculation, that would shorten the supply chain, increase biodiversity - with an agroforestry system - and boost employment opportunities in the rural district of Chiaravalle (Milan), where the project is implemented.
MadreProject proposes a model of education that trains people to preserve their environment and to acknowledge the different local specificities and resources of a territory. However, it goes further in introducing learnings on systemic thinking and human ecology, which, together with practical activities, could change the participants’ worldviews and behaviors, leading to the training of entrepreneurs and breadmakers of the future who are able to create circular processes to produce a positive social, economic and environmental impact through their sustainable activities and business.
In addition, the project integrates a plan for the regeneration of 10 hectares of abandoned agricultural fields, rescued from desertification and speculation, that would shorten the supply chain, increase biodiversity - with an agroforestry system - and boost employment opportunities in the rural district of Chiaravalle (Milan), where the project is implemented.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
MadreProject (re)activates an ecosystem of cultural places in Chiaravalle (Milan), situating its activities across different renovated and repurposed buildings such as Cascina Nosedo, a former farmstead made available for community use, and Padiglione Chiaravalle, a former school gym which is now a cultural center and Terzo Paesaggio’s headquarter.
During the first year of MadreProject’s experimentation, 1 hectare of agricultural fields was also sowed with ancient grains and regenerated with the involvement of 1000 children from local kindergartens and primary schools, to build a “Grain Library” and connect different people (children, families, teachers, citizens) conveying the importance of local bread production and short supply chain.
We designed and built a “Mobile pop-up bread lab” recycling a shipping container as micro bakery and laboratory, which is set up to allow MadreProject students to have access to a production, learning and sales space throughout the course of the school and even after the end of classes.
“Mobile pop-up bread lab”, inaugurated with a lecture by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, is also a device for cultural festivals, regeneration of places and activation of communities.
MadreProject has realized an ecosystem of physical indoor and outdoor places where the school activities take place, alongside which a public programme has been proposed to share news about MadreProject, to identify new students and/or supporters/stakeholders, but also to broaden the offer of cultural activities for the neighborhood (book presentations, open lectures and workshops, participatory artistic performance) and transform it into a city-wide attraction.
MadreProject brings participants together in the creative and collective experience of breadmaking and re-invention of places, and encourages them to engage with their cultural, social, and natural environment, fostering their sense of belonging and taking care of their territories.
During the first year of MadreProject’s experimentation, 1 hectare of agricultural fields was also sowed with ancient grains and regenerated with the involvement of 1000 children from local kindergartens and primary schools, to build a “Grain Library” and connect different people (children, families, teachers, citizens) conveying the importance of local bread production and short supply chain.
We designed and built a “Mobile pop-up bread lab” recycling a shipping container as micro bakery and laboratory, which is set up to allow MadreProject students to have access to a production, learning and sales space throughout the course of the school and even after the end of classes.
“Mobile pop-up bread lab”, inaugurated with a lecture by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, is also a device for cultural festivals, regeneration of places and activation of communities.
MadreProject has realized an ecosystem of physical indoor and outdoor places where the school activities take place, alongside which a public programme has been proposed to share news about MadreProject, to identify new students and/or supporters/stakeholders, but also to broaden the offer of cultural activities for the neighborhood (book presentations, open lectures and workshops, participatory artistic performance) and transform it into a city-wide attraction.
MadreProject brings participants together in the creative and collective experience of breadmaking and re-invention of places, and encourages them to engage with their cultural, social, and natural environment, fostering their sense of belonging and taking care of their territories.
Key objectives for inclusion
The project counts on solidarity and cooperation to achieve its goals: the launch of the city civic crowdfunding campaign fed into the opening of the school, helping MadreProject to re-activate the neighborhood, culturally and socially, with the help of its citizens.
MadreProject's journey is therefore built on the participation of its stakeholders and beneficiaries. In addition to the crowdfunding, in fact, the training programme itself was co-constructed with a group of potential students in an initial test phase called Cantiere MadreProject (“MadreProject’s Construction Site”), which took place in February 2021: a pilot week of free testing of the training programme that led to its redesign through direct discussion and experimentation with participants.
The school itself - and the activities of the project - is based on strong principles of participation and collaboration, therefore it aims and does everything to constitute an horizontal learning community between teachers and students, with informal moments, roundtable discussions, explorations, community lunches and through residential moments of living together. MadreProject, thinking with bread is “rooted in collective intelligence”, proposing that each learner builds their own educational path based on their needs and interests.
Furthermore, MadreProject is part of a programme to culturally and socially reactivate the neighborhood; it also intends to grant accessibility and affordability with scholarships to attract disadvantaged students.
The public programme is totally free and open to the neighborhood and to the city.
MadreProject, thinking with bread is also a didactic-educational path that has involved 1200 children from the 8 schools of the Corvetto-Vettabbia-Chiaravalle area.
Finally, some of the proposed bread-making workshops led to the production of bread that was distributed and donated to fragile families in Corvetto, a suburban neighborhood near Chiaravalle.
MadreProject's journey is therefore built on the participation of its stakeholders and beneficiaries. In addition to the crowdfunding, in fact, the training programme itself was co-constructed with a group of potential students in an initial test phase called Cantiere MadreProject (“MadreProject’s Construction Site”), which took place in February 2021: a pilot week of free testing of the training programme that led to its redesign through direct discussion and experimentation with participants.
The school itself - and the activities of the project - is based on strong principles of participation and collaboration, therefore it aims and does everything to constitute an horizontal learning community between teachers and students, with informal moments, roundtable discussions, explorations, community lunches and through residential moments of living together. MadreProject, thinking with bread is “rooted in collective intelligence”, proposing that each learner builds their own educational path based on their needs and interests.
Furthermore, MadreProject is part of a programme to culturally and socially reactivate the neighborhood; it also intends to grant accessibility and affordability with scholarships to attract disadvantaged students.
The public programme is totally free and open to the neighborhood and to the city.
MadreProject, thinking with bread is also a didactic-educational path that has involved 1200 children from the 8 schools of the Corvetto-Vettabbia-Chiaravalle area.
Finally, some of the proposed bread-making workshops led to the production of bread that was distributed and donated to fragile families in Corvetto, a suburban neighborhood near Chiaravalle.
Results in relation to category
- 360 donors participating in Civic Crowdfunding;
- 150 square metres of regenerated space with the Chiaravalle headquarter, a former gym of a disused public building as a hybrid cultural centre.
- A mobile pop-up bread lab;
- Public programme open to the city (5000 participants) in Chiaravalle and the neighbouring Corvetto district;
- more than 30 artists, architects, craftsmen, researchers etc. / year;
- 5 cultural organisations/year;
- 1 new cultural production/year;
- 3 artist, international collaboration / year.
- An educational pact involving an entire territory:
1000 children / year
8 nursery and primary schools in the Corvetto-Vettabbia-Chiaravalle area / year
- A process of soil regeneration and increased biodiversity:
10 hectares cultivated with wheat, in the southern area of Milan (rye and spelt + 4 varieties of ancient grains; 4 evolutionary mixtures);
Production of the first agricultural bread in the city of Milan, sold in 5 bakeries in the city.
- A learning path for aspiring bread entrepreneurs
1 pilot week in February 2021 to test the educational offer with 16 aspiring students;
- A Master's course with 13 members / 2023
-A productive and collaborative eco-system that brings together Terzo Paesaggio, Avanzi spa, Davide Longoni, Politecnico di Milano, Municipality of Milan, sponsors, artists, cultural institutions (Triennale di Milano, Piccolo Teatro).
- 150 square metres of regenerated space with the Chiaravalle headquarter, a former gym of a disused public building as a hybrid cultural centre.
- A mobile pop-up bread lab;
- Public programme open to the city (5000 participants) in Chiaravalle and the neighbouring Corvetto district;
- more than 30 artists, architects, craftsmen, researchers etc. / year;
- 5 cultural organisations/year;
- 1 new cultural production/year;
- 3 artist, international collaboration / year.
- An educational pact involving an entire territory:
1000 children / year
8 nursery and primary schools in the Corvetto-Vettabbia-Chiaravalle area / year
- A process of soil regeneration and increased biodiversity:
10 hectares cultivated with wheat, in the southern area of Milan (rye and spelt + 4 varieties of ancient grains; 4 evolutionary mixtures);
Production of the first agricultural bread in the city of Milan, sold in 5 bakeries in the city.
- A learning path for aspiring bread entrepreneurs
1 pilot week in February 2021 to test the educational offer with 16 aspiring students;
- A Master's course with 13 members / 2023
-A productive and collaborative eco-system that brings together Terzo Paesaggio, Avanzi spa, Davide Longoni, Politecnico di Milano, Municipality of Milan, sponsors, artists, cultural institutions (Triennale di Milano, Piccolo Teatro).
How Citizens benefit
MadreProject wants to generate impact on its own territory, not constituting itself as an elitist and closed space but as a widespread, inclusive educating community that welcomes external contributions and brings ideas, inputs and opportunities outside.
MadreProject addresses the challenges of the just transition. It transfers people skills and expertise for social businesses and inclusive projects.
There are no academic courses or training like MadreProject that put together learning practical knowledge with urban and social exploration and field tests.
Citizens were involved as early as the design phase of MadreProject, thanks to the civic crowdfunding programme through which people have been encouraged to contribute financially with donations to support the project(s) they considered most useful to the community and closest to their interests (360 donors have supported MadreProject).
Since then, the design process of MadreProject has followed the path of co-production through the participation of beneficiaries and inhabitants in the different stages of implementation.
Outside of the students, however, MadreProject proposes various activities capable of involving a broader target audience: this is the case of the 1200 children from nursery and primary schools in the area involved in the process of sowing the nearby fields; the public programme of cultural (public talks, in situ artistic creations in public space, art residences, piano concerts and performances in the wheat fields), social and educational events (collective bread-making in public spaces, community gardens, municipal market, social housing courtyards) open to the neighborhood and the city.
MadreProject activated a territorial educational pact involving a chain of actors, creating a bridge between the eight public schools in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods, the city's cultural institutions, private social organisations and school students.
MadreProject addresses the challenges of the just transition. It transfers people skills and expertise for social businesses and inclusive projects.
There are no academic courses or training like MadreProject that put together learning practical knowledge with urban and social exploration and field tests.
Citizens were involved as early as the design phase of MadreProject, thanks to the civic crowdfunding programme through which people have been encouraged to contribute financially with donations to support the project(s) they considered most useful to the community and closest to their interests (360 donors have supported MadreProject).
Since then, the design process of MadreProject has followed the path of co-production through the participation of beneficiaries and inhabitants in the different stages of implementation.
Outside of the students, however, MadreProject proposes various activities capable of involving a broader target audience: this is the case of the 1200 children from nursery and primary schools in the area involved in the process of sowing the nearby fields; the public programme of cultural (public talks, in situ artistic creations in public space, art residences, piano concerts and performances in the wheat fields), social and educational events (collective bread-making in public spaces, community gardens, municipal market, social housing courtyards) open to the neighborhood and the city.
MadreProject activated a territorial educational pact involving a chain of actors, creating a bridge between the eight public schools in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods, the city's cultural institutions, private social organisations and school students.
Physical or other transformations
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Innovative character
MadreProject is a model of cultural space that focuses on a school of Bread and Places to broaden the impacts to the entire territory. Thanks to the topic of bread, makes understandable to different target groups what cultural-based urban regeneration is. It is the didactic approach itself that tells the innovative essence of the project. MadreProject offers a learning path that replicates the process of designing, building and opening one's own business, inviting students to experience all the essential steps to develop a business idea: from the yeast to the dough, from the choice of the territory where to set up the business, to the creation of one's own product. Unlike traditional schools, it does so by underpinning its teaching model with an experimental and empirical approach and a horizontal model where teachers and learners test the field together, through methods that cross disciplines and stimulate the development of their own critical awareness. MadreProject treats bread as an element as complex as it is simple and that cannot disregard the relationship with the space in which it is produced and consumed, nor its possible impacts. This is why it combines laboratory lectures, urban explorations and workshops, creating a fertile relationship between elements of breadmaking, urban regeneration and enterprise; participants will learn how to do market research, develop a vision of change, design services, plan and test a sustainable business idea, and learn how to analyze the territory in which they will settle, in order to define concrete projects capable of dialoguing with the local context. MadreProject trains its students on business issues to turn manual knowledge into a real profession (sustainable and socially impactful), combines knowledge of the subject with knowledge of the context, and finally leads participants to develop critical thinking, question their worldview, experiment, make mistakes, and test unusual relationships between different fields.
Disciplines/knowledge reflected
The School of Bread and Places is the pivot on which different disciplines intertwine in a meshwork: artistic curatorship (to select the Public Programme proposals), architectural and landscape design (to conduct the mobile container project and the redevelopment of the Chiaravalle headquarter), agroforestry and regenerative agriculture (to sow and cultivate the Grain Library and the fields for the production of agricultural bread)
The didactic programme of the school assembles three thematic nodes, reflecting the competences of its promoters: Bread, Territory, Enterprise.
The school has interdisciplinary approach, therefore the three thematic fields mix, interact with each other, build unexpected dialogues. The territory is therefore seen as the 'project space', the area in which an enterprise, a process or an initiative is located and with which it must necessarily dialogue; a territory is thus seen not only as a physical space but also as a social space: made up of actors, practices, policies. Enterprise is understood as the thought behind the students’ projects: it is the thought behind the design of businesses with a social impact, that are able to generate change and positive benefits in the territory, which is why these two themes (territory and enterprise) constantly dialogue within the lessons. Finally, the theme of bread, the heart of the school, which in this case becomes a tool, an instrument to build relationships with the territory and its inhabitants (bread is the gateway to the community), to give life to a business, to produce - through an artisan product - social impact, to make an intention concrete and material.
At last, the involvement of participants from various backgrounds and with differing levels of familiarity with breadmaking allows for peer learning and the harnessing of both formal and non-formal knowledge.
The didactic programme of the school assembles three thematic nodes, reflecting the competences of its promoters: Bread, Territory, Enterprise.
The school has interdisciplinary approach, therefore the three thematic fields mix, interact with each other, build unexpected dialogues. The territory is therefore seen as the 'project space', the area in which an enterprise, a process or an initiative is located and with which it must necessarily dialogue; a territory is thus seen not only as a physical space but also as a social space: made up of actors, practices, policies. Enterprise is understood as the thought behind the students’ projects: it is the thought behind the design of businesses with a social impact, that are able to generate change and positive benefits in the territory, which is why these two themes (territory and enterprise) constantly dialogue within the lessons. Finally, the theme of bread, the heart of the school, which in this case becomes a tool, an instrument to build relationships with the territory and its inhabitants (bread is the gateway to the community), to give life to a business, to produce - through an artisan product - social impact, to make an intention concrete and material.
At last, the involvement of participants from various backgrounds and with differing levels of familiarity with breadmaking allows for peer learning and the harnessing of both formal and non-formal knowledge.
Methodology used
The approach we use in the School of Bread and Places training is the same one we used to realise the project.
MadreProject, School of Bread and Places is based on the intersection of three strands (bread, territory, enterprise). To this are added further themes capable of soliciting reflections, transversal visions to re-imagine the way we produce and live in the world.
In short, MadreProject is built on an ever new and unusual combination of knowledge but is based on some well-established principles:
Active experimentation
MadreProject challenges traditional teaching methods and is based on a model where we learn from experience and error. Participants are invited to experiment first-hand with their own goals and turn them into concrete entrepreneurial projects.
Reflexivity
Participants are encouraged to broaden the horizons of their imagination, develop their critical capacity, question established certainties and points of view, allowing them to experience new and unforeseen ones.
Horizontality
Teachers and learners are considered on the same level and learn together, coming into contact with each other. Students themselves are invited to build a learning community together by sharing their expertise. The teaching programme is itself subject to (some) remodeling, depending on the interests that emerge from the students during the lessons.
Collaboration
MadreProject bases its teaching on the assembly of networks and communities and imagines the emergence of collaborative enterprises, born from the open encounter between subject, place, students and professionals.
Trespassing
MadreProject crosses disciplinary boundaries, bringing together innovation and tradition, different views, subjects and approaches: from urban planning to baking, from management to philosophy, from artistic performances to ecology, every point of view is taken into account and put into dialogue with each other.
MadreProject, School of Bread and Places is based on the intersection of three strands (bread, territory, enterprise). To this are added further themes capable of soliciting reflections, transversal visions to re-imagine the way we produce and live in the world.
In short, MadreProject is built on an ever new and unusual combination of knowledge but is based on some well-established principles:
Active experimentation
MadreProject challenges traditional teaching methods and is based on a model where we learn from experience and error. Participants are invited to experiment first-hand with their own goals and turn them into concrete entrepreneurial projects.
Reflexivity
Participants are encouraged to broaden the horizons of their imagination, develop their critical capacity, question established certainties and points of view, allowing them to experience new and unforeseen ones.
Horizontality
Teachers and learners are considered on the same level and learn together, coming into contact with each other. Students themselves are invited to build a learning community together by sharing their expertise. The teaching programme is itself subject to (some) remodeling, depending on the interests that emerge from the students during the lessons.
Collaboration
MadreProject bases its teaching on the assembly of networks and communities and imagines the emergence of collaborative enterprises, born from the open encounter between subject, place, students and professionals.
Trespassing
MadreProject crosses disciplinary boundaries, bringing together innovation and tradition, different views, subjects and approaches: from urban planning to baking, from management to philosophy, from artistic performances to ecology, every point of view is taken into account and put into dialogue with each other.
How stakeholders are engaged
MadreProject, is a collective effort from Terzo Paesaggio, a non-profit organization specialized in regeneration through culture, Avanzi S.p.A., benefits society with 25 years of experience in sustainability and innovative urban projects, a|cube, social impact startups accelerator and Davide Longoni, master breadmaker, co-founder of the movement PAU (Urban Farming Breadmakers), first national network of agricultural bakers.
Milan municipality selected MadreProject as eligible for the city civic crowdfunding 2021, an innovative funding mechanism for bottom-up projects involving no profits and inhabitants. The project was selected by the Italian Ministry of Culture in the Creative Living Lab 2022 call; by Fondazione di Comunità Milano for the realization of a proximity social project involving 8 local schools. Although strongly anchored at the local level, MadreProject has a supra-local scope, with activities already underway to establish thematic nodes in other regions, also using PNRR funds dedicated to the regeneration of historic Italian villages at risk of depopulation. MadreProject has an active project in southern Italy (Morcone - BN). It received the “Best Start-up For Impact” award from programme Get It.
With the Moleskine Foundation's Creativity Pioneers Found 2023 award, we activated an international community around the project's topics. The 360 donors who crowdfunded the project and the many organizations involved constitute a locally and supra-local rooted formal and informal network. Among the organizations involved there are the international network Lo Stato dei Luoghi, and the PAU network.
We have activated a framework agreement with the Politecnico di Milano to cooperate on the regeneration of the area. We also report the participation of MadreProject in international cultural festivals such as Resilienze in Bologna and Campo Base in Val d’Ossola bringing our approach into the urban regeneration processes taking place in these other territories
Milan municipality selected MadreProject as eligible for the city civic crowdfunding 2021, an innovative funding mechanism for bottom-up projects involving no profits and inhabitants. The project was selected by the Italian Ministry of Culture in the Creative Living Lab 2022 call; by Fondazione di Comunità Milano for the realization of a proximity social project involving 8 local schools. Although strongly anchored at the local level, MadreProject has a supra-local scope, with activities already underway to establish thematic nodes in other regions, also using PNRR funds dedicated to the regeneration of historic Italian villages at risk of depopulation. MadreProject has an active project in southern Italy (Morcone - BN). It received the “Best Start-up For Impact” award from programme Get It.
With the Moleskine Foundation's Creativity Pioneers Found 2023 award, we activated an international community around the project's topics. The 360 donors who crowdfunded the project and the many organizations involved constitute a locally and supra-local rooted formal and informal network. Among the organizations involved there are the international network Lo Stato dei Luoghi, and the PAU network.
We have activated a framework agreement with the Politecnico di Milano to cooperate on the regeneration of the area. We also report the participation of MadreProject in international cultural festivals such as Resilienze in Bologna and Campo Base in Val d’Ossola bringing our approach into the urban regeneration processes taking place in these other territories
Global challenges
MadreProject intends to respond to a series of global challenges: first of all, it looks at the environment by trying to foster the construction of short supply chain networks, bringing future producers (student breadmakers) into dialogue with the resources of a border area between city and country, rethinking agriculture in the city and farm to fork. This is why we produce the first agricultural bread in the city of Milan.
It also intends to encourage urban regeneration processes and the creation of new services in underprivileged (and not) neighborhoods through the creation of bakery shops with a social impact that can also host transversal services capable of responding to the needs of the community (a cultural and educational offer, neighborhood concierge, etc.), as well as processes that favor the fifteen-minute city model, reducing the number of inhabitants' journeys (and therefore reducing atmospheric pollution) and creating richer and more cohesive living environments. This is why MadreProject is a cultural centre based in a suburb of the city of Milan.
Another of the challenges to which MadreProject tries to respond is that of Great Resignation, the increase in job dissatisfaction due to conditions that undervalue the vocations and desires of workers: in this sense, the school intends to work on the emergence of the entrepreneurial desires of people in order to guide them in the design and implementation of their own business ideas that respond more to their talents and are able to satisfy both their desires for 'a new life' and - as highlighted in the previous two points - the needs of a territorial context. This is why MadreProject trains new impact entrepreneurs with a renewed sensitivity for urban regeneration.
It also intends to encourage urban regeneration processes and the creation of new services in underprivileged (and not) neighborhoods through the creation of bakery shops with a social impact that can also host transversal services capable of responding to the needs of the community (a cultural and educational offer, neighborhood concierge, etc.), as well as processes that favor the fifteen-minute city model, reducing the number of inhabitants' journeys (and therefore reducing atmospheric pollution) and creating richer and more cohesive living environments. This is why MadreProject is a cultural centre based in a suburb of the city of Milan.
Another of the challenges to which MadreProject tries to respond is that of Great Resignation, the increase in job dissatisfaction due to conditions that undervalue the vocations and desires of workers: in this sense, the school intends to work on the emergence of the entrepreneurial desires of people in order to guide them in the design and implementation of their own business ideas that respond more to their talents and are able to satisfy both their desires for 'a new life' and - as highlighted in the previous two points - the needs of a territorial context. This is why MadreProject trains new impact entrepreneurs with a renewed sensitivity for urban regeneration.
Learning transferred to other parties
MadreProject proposes a type of urban regeneration that can be easily replicated in different contexts, different locations, and with different groups of beneficiaries.
It is a matter of opening up the impacts of a school to an entire territory, realising a cultural public programme, regenerating agricultural lands, activating a productive and collaborative ecosystem that brings together a multidimensional chain of stakeholders in the urban regeneration of an area.
The School of Bread and Places intends precisely to transfer skills to replicate and transfer knowledge in urban regeneration to other places.
Our students come from all over Italy and the EU and their new businesses will be spaces that will transform their territories.
The school requires spaces (school-spaces or multifunctional ones, formal or informal, indoors or outdoors) to host classes and an accessorized laboratory for bread making workshops but can be repurposed to adapt to different situations, depending on the space and time available.
The training model, in particular, can be repurposed to short intensive weeks, focused on particular aspects of entrepreneurial design or baking. In fact, it is not important that the entire production process is replicated and learned: the core element of MadreProject is, on the contrary, the development of critical thinking, a careful look at places, a production mode that focuses much less on the result and more on the process.
The format could also be adapted on other content and topics, besides bread, designing one's own training model on other specific contexts to be regenerated and on their specificities and needs, adapting to different categories of professionals (more in need of training, more numerous and therefore with more need to experiment with innovative models etc.).
It is a matter of opening up the impacts of a school to an entire territory, realising a cultural public programme, regenerating agricultural lands, activating a productive and collaborative ecosystem that brings together a multidimensional chain of stakeholders in the urban regeneration of an area.
The School of Bread and Places intends precisely to transfer skills to replicate and transfer knowledge in urban regeneration to other places.
Our students come from all over Italy and the EU and their new businesses will be spaces that will transform their territories.
The school requires spaces (school-spaces or multifunctional ones, formal or informal, indoors or outdoors) to host classes and an accessorized laboratory for bread making workshops but can be repurposed to adapt to different situations, depending on the space and time available.
The training model, in particular, can be repurposed to short intensive weeks, focused on particular aspects of entrepreneurial design or baking. In fact, it is not important that the entire production process is replicated and learned: the core element of MadreProject is, on the contrary, the development of critical thinking, a careful look at places, a production mode that focuses much less on the result and more on the process.
The format could also be adapted on other content and topics, besides bread, designing one's own training model on other specific contexts to be regenerated and on their specificities and needs, adapting to different categories of professionals (more in need of training, more numerous and therefore with more need to experiment with innovative models etc.).
Keywords
Thinking with bread
Urban regeneration
Future city
Social Impact
Cultural innovation
