MYO intends to stimulate youth participation to urban life. Students of disadvantaged periphery in Rome will be engaged through creative workshops. Innovative geographical and pedagogical practices can enhance local, social and civic knowledge, stimulating youth's active participation. We believe that territorial awareness gives capacity to produce changes in local environment.

Primavalle neighborhood, city of Rome, center Italy

The aim of the project proposal is to promote the regeneration of Primavalle as multicultural hub of the city by including citizens in the urban renovation. We intend to face the lack of cohesion and the discrimination by focusing on the historical and geographical education of younger Primavalle's inhabitants. IGS will arrange workshops and meeting with local students fostering the preservation of the city's commons and participation to the management of their own territory. Moreover, thanks to the collaboration of a local selected partner ("Primavalle in rete"), youths will realize a collective emotional memory project about the origins of the neighborhood, which could be able to wake and stimulate student's civic engagement through practical proposal for local development

Young people are the main target group, especially pupils aged 12-14. In Primavalle being adolescent is harder than usual because of the lack of good quality public spaces, of the high-density dwellings and of the difficult social backgrounds. Families have so many troubles and receive so poor help from the municipality that they do not trust institutions anymore, this fracture affects cohesion and social wellbeing. To work with young people is an effective way to change this situation by promoting a different attitude for the future. Moreover, Primavalle is a multicultural neighborhood that suffers from social and ethnical discrimination, but students use to frequent mixed classes that could become laboratory of integration.

SGI will start the project by a first phase of workshops on field, offers to the schools of Primavalle. During this pahse SGI and "Primavalle in rete" will lead activities both in class and on the streets. Pupils will explore the area with the help of the local association, "Primavalle in rete", and will make sensible cartography workshops. We will do it in a participatory way, teaching kids -and indirectly also their families - that geography is a tool of civic empowerment. To grasp the messages that territory hides and trying artistic and innovative ways of representing them it is a powerful tool to create spaces of dialogue, empowerment and cohesion. workshop activities foster a reflection about migrations, both internal and international, through geographical games like the family tree and the mapping families’ origins.
During this process of collective analysis we will stimulate kids to think about actions they, with our initial help, can make to improve neighborhood wellbeing. During the second phase students will have the opportunity to realize some of their action plan for Primavalle with the help of the local association, Primavalle in rete, as example of civic activation. The content of this action is not predetermined by us but will arise from a participatory process.

The implementation of the planned activities is aimed at creating a space for dialogue, reflection and co-design to try to respond adequately to the needs of the area. These actions should allow to develop a social and territorial consciousness that induces the interested population to learn new and profitable ways of territorial governance. We will try to improve analysis and problem solving capacities of the local actors, exalting the community logic, so that they can guide and promote ideas and actions. All materials produced by the students during the workshops will be collected and put into a Story Map, a powerful online easy-access communicational tool. Finally, students will realize a concrete action for the local developement in which put in practice workshops’ theory.

As Primavalle is an open community directly oriented to mutual support of weakest people, being from its foundation a collecting neighbourhood for poor and margin people, we expected that realizing open air workshops young students will have the possibility to meet local active member of the community, in order to create exchange of values between old and new inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The expected result would be to reach a high level of visibility toward the community and above all local institutions and existing association where all local stakeholders will have the possibility to be listened from local decision maker and share energies and targets to realize practical solutions for the community and public spaces.

The SGI's team is made by young reaserchers with comprovated knowledge of pedagogy of human geography. Geography is a way of writing the world, not only to represent it but also to propose a new version of it. This is why we believe in the power of this discipline as a tool for active citizenship and social cohesion. Making local sensible cartography and planning action together is a propositive way to dialogue and build community.
In our team there are people who grew up or still live in Primavalle and know its difficulties and potentials. There are other team members who don't live there but are experts in methodology and on fied reaserch-action. The partnership with the local association makes the local connection event stronger, thanks to their rooted activity in the community.

Project administration & support 6,800 EUR
Consultancy & Expert overall cost 17,000 EUR
Workshop set-up and running 10,200 EUR

We would like to receive comments in order to strengthen our project proposal. If you have some advice or doubt do not exitate to share with us. We especially would like to link our project with others similar ideas that use historical and geographical knowledge as tools for activation.