PlayTortona
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
PlayTortona is a social inclusion project in collaboration with cultural centre BASE Milano that aims to create connections between the past, present and future of the Tortona neighbourhood.
BASE becomes a repository of memories and an experimental laboratory for residents to create future scenarios and keep the identity of Tortona alive. PlayTortona offers the possibility of strengthening social bonds and exploring future possibilities.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
PlayTortona is a social inclusion project in collaboration with BASE Milano, a cultural centre in the Tortona neighbourhood. The aim is to create an inclusive neighbourhood, in terms of spaces, services and relations, valorizing vulnerable categories to create a connection with BASE. In particular, PlayTortona involves children and residents of the neighbourhood. The mission of PlayTortona is to keep the identity of the neighbourhood alive and make it visible to its citizens, involving them in the creation of future scenarios. The project is articulated on three different levels: an advertising campaign, an experiential installation at BASE and a long-term phase of community involvement.
The advertising campaign action invites residents and children to attend the event at BASE during the Milano Design Week 2021. Posters with collection cards will be placed all around the neighbourhood to invite people to collect treasure cards. The collecting cards allow people to get to know some of the stories of the neighbourhood. They can scan the QR code to listen to some stories on SoundCloud.
The second phase is the installation in BASE during the Milano Design Week: the installation is divided into three main sections. At the entrance, participants are provided with informations about the experience and a string to collect treasure cards. In the second area participants follow the path to meet totems with the stories of the neighbourhood and cards to discover. Totems tell stories from 1980 to the last twenty years. The last step of the path is the area of co-creation with the participants. They will have to write or draw a future scenario of the neighbourhood and hang their card on the board of future memories.
After the Design Week will start the long-term action with the collection of the future scenarios. BASE invites designers, artists, and other professional people together with residents to form different groups to take actions based on the selected future scenario.
Key objectives for sustainability
PlayTortona is based on the concept of inclusiveness and social sustainability. Due to its design features, it does not deal extensively with environmental issues, but it is possible to identify elements that define the environmental sustainability of the project.
PlayTortona is designed to be a temporary project-event, with a defined duration in time. In particular, the first two phases of the project are more temporary than the long-term action phase. The choice of materials for the realisation of all the project's touchpoints was dictated by this characteristic and followed three parameters: low environmental impact, speed/ease of realisation, low costs. For this reason, we chose materials such as cardboard, paper, wood and hemp twine. Other materials needed for the event in phase two are easily available from BASE.
Another interesting aspect of the project is the definition of scenarios and the possible environmental impact. In fact, through the identification of future scenarios, citizens can generate actions of intervention on the territory, which can also be environmental. This process helps residents to create a community that allows them to identify spaces in need of change, design the intervention action and implement it. The community can get in touch with the municipality and implement real bottom-up actions. Such actions can be a regeneration of neighbourhood spaces, waste collection days and awareness-raising on the use of plastics and polluting materials, development of new services for the recovery of materials, clothes or objects, creation of urban vegetable gardens, etc. BASE has a key role in developing meetings and workshops to raise awareness in this direction.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Our design takes the simple form of a totem with speakers and a megaphone that can adapt to any neighborhood, as a point of inspiration to form a tangible interaction strategy. PlayTortona totems bring together stories, illustrations and images of the neighborhood and form a journey for visitors to explore and discover different layers of life in their surroundings. Our intent was to address the need for connection between past, present and future, and facilitate the expression of personal histories, desires and wishes, using a tangible, symbolic medium that can carry material meanings for both old and new generations.
The ritual interaction with the totem thus becomes a shared performance of collecting memories, listening to audio stories and creating a possible future postcard. A “Totem” that contains thoughtful stories and information collected over a period of time can also be a “Totem” that is filled with desires and wishes for the future, making new meaningful experiences for different generations.
Key objectives for inclusion
Play Tortona promotes inclusion among different members of a neighborhood with co-creation strategies, community dialogue and multi generational stories.
The journey that totems create offers the chance to listen to the lives of others through the eyes of real people in the neighborhood, they can be women, shop keepers, kids and elderly people. Told through audio, visually and through words, each is a person’s own tale that we are helping to tell, to bring people together and foster an open and diverse community. Individuals experience their surroundings differently and this can be also reflected in their vision for the future. For this reason, we ask participants to create postcards of their wishes and desires for the neighborhood. By showcasing past, present and future of people we aim to promote empathy and tolerance in the society by creating an opportunity for people to break out of their own social bubble and to meet people with differences around a totem. We do it across all touchpoints, on social media and in outdoor space.
The co-design activities proposed by BASE during the long-term action involve different stakeholders at different levels. Considering the strong creative and artistic character of the Tortona neighbourhood, some stakeholders could be actors already present in the area such as Pietro Corraini or Superstudio. In this way it would create a very strong synergy between citizens and experts already living in the neighbourhood.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
In PlayTortona, the main aspects of sustainability, inclusiveness and experience are combined through social interaction and participation of the neighborhood in PlayTortona’s activities. On one hand, people from different generations come together around totems to learn from each other’s experiences and hear each other’s stories, they can engage and they can put themselves in the role of someone else to learn and build an inclusive community. While on the other hand spaces and activities provide the opportunity for interaction between these members, and through environmentally friendly materials they build tangible outputs that are meaningful and adaptable. Neighborhoods can be places with rich history and above all people experience a lot of untold stories that teach not only facts but life lessons. PlayTortona opens up a journey of experiences and activities that gives everyone an opportunity to be heard and to learn. Along each path, people are able to discover treasures and stories that add to their knowledge about Tortona (neighborhood), where all these treasures are hidden and maybe invisible to the public. At the end of the journey, their imagination and reflection about future scenarios will allow the generation of new knowledge.
Following are the values of PlayTortona:
- Making full use of the common “spirit” inside neighborhoods and setting appropriate spaces and services as triggers encourages people to share their feelings and stories.
- Keep the identity of the neighborhood alive and make it visible to its citizens.
- Children and residents contribute to creating the future scenarios of Tortona and they realize something tangible for their neighborhood.
- Making a repository of the neighborhood's memory and an experimental laboratory for the creation of future scenarios.
