Lessinia, a peripheral mountain area of Northern Italy, suffers a continuous erosion of its worth, mainly because of depopulation and an aging population.
Our project aims to tackle some of the area’s difficulties through a participatory mapping process.
We’ll involve relevant stakholders, through convivial focus groups, to help us define what makes Lessinia so unique from a naturalistic and cultural point of view. The output will be 3 maps, with captivating graphics and informal texts.

Lessinia is a large karst plateau in northern Italy, located between Verona, Vicenza and Trento.

Inhabited since Prehistory, Lessinia stands as a frontier place, amid 2 regions and 3 provinces. It was colonized in the 13th century by the Cimbri, a Germanic people who profoundly marked its culture. The area, of great naturalistic and historical value, suffers from depopulation, the consequent loss of identity, and faces a difficult generational shift. "Hit and run" tourism creates strong social tensions, mainly tied to the environmental issue. Last winter, thousands demonstrated to defend the borders of Lessinia Regional Nature Park from an economic development proposal. Also due to climate change, Lessinia must rethink its tourist offer. Immigrant communities have found a home here in an essentially hostile climate, not very open to integration and gender diversity

The outlook, for inhabitants of Lessinia, is not quite rosy. Depopulation, aging and a steady economic decline in the last 20 years has let unfortunately to short-term solutions and resorting to short-sighted visions.
To trigger change, it’s essential to involge young people: our project gives them an opportunity to speak their mind and act to make Lessinia a more welcoming, livable and flourishing area. On the other side, it’s equally paramount to foster welcoming conditions for all the immigrants and foreigners, helping them in thriving with businesses that are compatible with the area’s cultural heritage and the environment. Even tourists, who are increasingly drawn in numbers to the Park, must be welcomed in such a way to respect both environmental and economic sustainability.

We start by giving voice to the widest spectrum of locals, usually in the form of dining focus groups, during which we let them play out different point of views on the same macro subject. The outcome is a list of exhibitors and points of interest, to be included in the guide after a second vetting by our online community.
Everyone on this list is made aware of our project, in order to disseminate our goals and involve them as stakeholders in our vision.
An economic contribution is always welcomed but never mandatory.
Our editorial staff then works on the maps drawing, text refining and english translation.
The graphic layout is a distinctive value that makes every map recognizable as part of the Salmon family. Finally, a public event is organized to disseminate our outputs

Locals institutions must be made aware of the need to rethink Lessinia and its local economy, starting from the needs of its inhabitants and always balancing the socio-economic and environmental issues.
Our listening activity aims to collect the most interesting ideas and projects that emerged at a grassroot level and inspire innovative policy-making; to encourage greater cohesion among the resident communities and (among the younger ones) a sense of belonging to a economically distressed territory; spread greater awareness of its enormous potential: if a place is perceived in all its beauty, the inhabitants will be motivated to take care of it and promote it. Finally, to promote the more modern, sensitive and open side of Lessinia for a more aware, respectful and fruitful tourism

Lessinia locals, to use an euphemism, are not very prone to dialogue.
If in part this trait is historically tied to the area's morphology, today that cannot be an issue anymore.
Nevertheless, this wary approach remains a distinctive feature despite the obvious need to repopulate with immigrants and foreigners.
That’s why we invite many different kind of locals to take a seat and talk about the territory they love and share, a topic that every one of them is passionate about.
On such premises, we find that even very different people can find common ground and a common language, getting to know each other, and become actors of the mapping process. With time, this collaboration will lead to form embryos of communities, able to overcome stereotypes and trigger new policies

Salmon Magazine was born in 2009 to spread our love for Verona and its province.
Born online to give voice to the vibrant universe of cultural and social organizations, that are very rarely told in an effective way by traditional media, Salmon then evolved with the envision of an innovative and collaborative mapping process, born by the ove for the immaterial cultural heritage of the area, made of a magic mix of landscape, traditions, craftsmen, exhibitors.
Our dissemination model strives to achieve the widest contribution possible from the local community at a granular (borough) level, with no discrimination in terms of class, race, gender and ideology.
Salmon Magazine today is animated by a network of 250 organizations and a community of over 15000 followers, both growing by the day.

Point of interest definition € 6.400
Dissemination € 9.000
Training € 3.000
Creative phase € 2.250
Realization phase € 4.050
Launch and distribution phase € 2.300
Coordination and management € 3.600
Content creation € 14.000
Promotion € 5.000

We are interested in suggestions for improving the use of crowdfunding or digital e-commerce platforms that could help optimize costs. In Italy and Verona, the public is still not very responsive to the use of these tools which, in many parts of Europe, are widespread and more popular.