We aim at creating educational, artistic and cultural contents -give a soul- to a structure that risks to be a mere container. We want to co-ideate a vision, form an operative group and start a pilot program for students, children and their families. A bottom up mission that generates values, shows the youngest point of view and transfers them to stake holders and local administration.
We believe in shared processes and want to generate an interdisciplinary, cross generation cultural reality.

This initiative will take place in Camerino, town of culture in the Marche region, centre of Italy.

Welcoming Camerino lies in a beautiful hilly area devastated by 2016 earthquake. The tragic event changed the physical asset of the town, and of its neighborhood area. The basic needs to give houses to inhabitants and temporary educational structures have been accomplished.
The recent SARS-CoV-2 epidemic has hit the already fragile community re-aggravating the impact of social and cultural isolation. People live is a sort of impermanent status.
In 2017 we launched a short term process of self emotional rebuilding for kids, using arts as a mean to express feelings and explore non judgement empathy. This positive experience established new forms of exchanges and dialogue between children and adults. This process needs to be continued, so that values can be rebuilt together with buildings.

The idea is addressed to students of primary and secondary schools, but also to kindergarten pupils. Our target is mainly 3-18 years old generations, whose voices are very hardly heard.
Also we want to widen the participation to adults and families, for extra schools activities and intergenerational programs.
Figures from public institutions and parents will be involved also in the co-ideation phase of the project.
We will structure a shared process of co-planning whose results will be elaborated into vision and mission of the space "A place to grow". Eventually it will be transformed in a program of activities that involve experts from different creative, science, cultural fields, locally based and coming from other regions or countries.

The idea consists two phases: 1. characterization and preparation; 2. implementation and start up.
In phase 1 a multidiscipline working group will be created through a selection via an open call. Participants, divided per age. will take part to a 3 weeks workshop sessions to distill and find out vision and mission for "A place to grow". After this preparatory work, through the involvement of local stakeholders and Administration, a yearly program of activities will be publicly presented before the end of 2020. The program is expected to start at the beginning of 2021 (phase 2).
Co-ideation workshops will be lead with a learning by doing approach and a peer to peer method. Experts will use creativity and transversal attitude to let contributions emerge from all participants.

In September 2020 a fundraised building construction (http://www.aplacetogrow.it/wp/) will be finalized. The risk is to have an empty space to host the kids and the young students of Camerino with no clear ideas on the activities to perform and without long term vision on the objectives to be achieved.
If our idea will find consent in one year from now we will have formed and well trained a group of people with all the competence to coordinate the activities of the program. The expectation is to have extra school cultural, ludic, artistic activities, summer camps etc. that will become a permanent asset.
“A place to grow" will become a project, not a building. The community will benefit of initiatives that spread outside the walls of 150 squared meters to the rest of the city.

Children and young people have a social role, as active citizens, but differently from adults they cannot express it at political level as they do not have the possibility to be directly represented. Cities and civil society are composed by multiplicity of glances, which also include minors, but whose points of view and development is considered only in relation to school education, family and entertainment.
With this idea we aim at an "agorà" whose functions and results fall back on local engagement in a bottom up process, from kids to parents, to families, to teachers, to public institutions.
We believe that children creativity is a tool to democratic evolution, we think that spaces need to be filled in with shared meanings.

We want to continue the work started three years ago. The results of that workshop structured process changed the "eyes" of parents when they took part to the public restitution at the end of the experience. We all were aware that a change had occurred in kids, and through them also their parents and other people found new values for the future.
We believe that the first change always takes place inside individuals and from there expands to environment. Every single seed planted in a good field and properly fed can generate an impact on society development. If decision processes are shared and co-ideated their positive impact becomes resonant and deep. We believe that if used properly, art and culture have this power.

administration 2000 EUR
insurance 1000 EUR
travel and accommodation 5000 EUR
workshops materials 3000 EUR
prints 2000 EUR
communication and public relations 5000 EUR
documentation 3000 EUR
experts fees 25000 EUR
coordination 5000 EUR
evaluation 3000 EUR
personnel costs 4000 EUR
tech rentals 3000 EUR
lighting/heating/cleanings 10000 EUR
SARS-CoV-2 security measures 2000 EUR
public presentations 2000 EUR

We would like to know if the idea is clear and well understandable in terms of objectives.