School students from mountain and urban areas will be involved in a mutual exchange of visions, with the aim of understanding, valorizing and learning to take care of them. This will be done through their joint participation in a 5-days workshop, where they will explore the needs of the territory, ideate and build in the public space a wooden installation that will be enjoyable from local inhabitants and visitors and testify of the enriching exchange that a common process can bring.
The exChange Altitudes project aims at stimulating the knowledge of the mountain and urban contexts, to encourage a respectful approach for sustainable development. We want to offer the young generations who live in these contexts an opportunity to increase awareness of the beauty and fragility of their respective territories, so that both can become places to live in and take care of. These objectives are to be pursued through the implementation of a pilot project that will consist of a 5-day workshop involving two high school classes, one from an urban context (Padua) and one from a mountain context (Silandro), to be held in one of the two contexts of origin. A preparatory phase will consist of an active research of the students to develop a basic knowledge of the territorial contexts involved. Subsequently, during the workshop that will represent the core moment of the proposal, the students will be asked to discuss, decide, design and create together an installation that responds to the needs of the place, identified by the students themselves. During the first two days of the workshop the students will have the opportunity to get to know each other and to deepen their knowledge of the place where the workshop will take place. Thanks to the participation of local actors, they will be able to analyze the territory and discuss its strengths and weaknesses to finally identify a specific need and find an adequate solution. Over the last three days, the students will be able to design and build a work that realizes the solution identified. The first phase, including the preparatory meetings and the first two days of workshops, will be organized and conducted by the promoters of the project, while in the second phase - the three days of design and construction of the installation - we will rely on a group of experienced professionals. in the co-design and construction of temporary installations.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
The project aims at promoting among young students the respect and care for the environment they live in or frequent. Topics such as environmental degradation, mobility, land use, sustainable tourism, biodiversity restoration, sustainable agriculture and soil consumption will be discussed with young people and local actors during the territorial analysis phase. Students, both from the analyzed context and not, will observe the territory through the lenses of environmental sustainability and will be stimulated to seek solutions to promote it. The concrete output of the project will also be consistent with those values: the installation to be realized will be made exclusively from wood and metal, materials that can be reused when the installation is dismantled.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
The co-design process of the installation will be accompanied by a group of experts, and will consist in the creation of an artistic installation for the enhancement of the local landscape. The value of the action carried out within the project is more symbolic than functional. The project will give the students an opportunity to realize an installation from its ideation to the concrete fabrication, letting them free to imagine an artwork that can symbolically represent the needs or the answer to the needs of the local community and environment. Moreover, the installation arouses the attention to local issues not only in the students’ consciousness, but also among inhabitants and visitors. Indeed, located in a public space, the wooden construction will attract the viewers, who, through the experience of a new landscape, will be stimulated with new questions and new feelings about the local reality.
Please highlight how the concept/idea can be exemplary in this context
Inclusion is the last but perhaps the most important of the three pillars of our project. Inclusion is key before, in all phases of the realization of the artistic installation envisaged by the project. The project has the strength to bring different worlds together. First of all, the points of view and habits of mountain and urban areas are confronted, which is the heart, the meaning and the aim of the project. At the same time, however, the world of schools, municipal administrations, local actors, citizens and young professionals are also approached. Different generations, life and work contexts join to promote a culture of respect and support for the development of the territory. Thanks to the share of different points of view it is possible to unhinge stereotypes and observe the territory in which one lives with new perspectives. The process of co-planning and realization of the installation has as protagonists young people with very different backgrounds, which allows to develop innovative solutions through the comparison of problems and solutions of the urban and the mountain contexts. Finally, the installation is a concrete and tangible output of this process that opens up beyond the relationships between the students.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary
The project can be seen as an exemplary and replicable process through which seeds of a widespread consciousness for more sustainable territories and communities are planted. This process is the meeting of different cultures, the construction of new relationships between them through an artistic process and the sprout of a common culture of care for the environment in which we live. The outcome of this aesthetics, inclusion and sustainability project is projected beyond the two school classes: the relationships and new perspectives developed by the young people reach teachers, other young people, families and the local community.
Exchange opportunities are a common reality for schoolers, and an enriching experience. They are often realized internationally, believing in the undeniable value of exchange among different cultures, languages, backgrounds. We believe that an exchange experience might have just the same value between students whose distance is not geographical, national or language-related, but one measured through the deep differences between their living contexts. Similarly, students often get the opportunities to learn about the historical, artistic or social value of important cities of other countries, but rarely have the chance to discover their own territory, from a social, environmental, historical and economic perspective. Mountain and urban areas are mostly in contact through unbalanced economic, touristic and demographic flows and have few occasions to meet on an equal level allowing mutual exchange. The core of this proposal is the multifaceted sharing of experiences among students from the two contexts, an experience that will be equally enriching and mind-opening.
The exChange Altitudes project was selected for the Alpine Changemaker Basecamp from CIPRA International, and a tutoring program has been following its evolution during the last months, and will continue until its implementation phase. The possibility of proposing the pilot to the two contexts of Padua and Silandro has started to be investigated with positive responses on both sides. We have also reached out to an association with years-long experience in the realization of sustainable, context-tied, wooden artistic installations, which would be supporting the workshop implementation. For the promotion of the project, municipal actors and networks will be mobilized for the project realization to reach a wide audience, and to guarantee to all the partners, actors involved and funding entities a good visibility. Finally, the pilot project’s replicability has been one of the first concerns during its ideation. The common traits and struggles of mountain and urban areas in the Alpine region and the nearby lowlands were seen from the very beginning as an element that would make it possible for the project to be adapted, fit and address the peculiarities of similar contexts. In the area where the pilot project will take place, it will also be possible to replicate the project from one year to another, involving new classes and strengthening the links between the two contexts and their actors, something that is strongly in line with the project’s vision.
A provisional GANTT chart was developed for the period June 2022-June 2023, which contains the main activities to be realized within the project. Being the project addressed to schools as the principal beneficiary of the project, the period considered suits the project’s implementation well. This will include:
- Stakeholder identification & contact (June-August 2022),
- workshop’s fine tuning with the help of the involved stakeholders (September 2022-January 2023)
- Introduction meetings to be held at school and workshop realization (February-March 2023)
- Project evaluation, feedback collection, communication, exchange on possible replicability opportunities and financial reporting (April-June 2023)
Coordination, internal and external communication activities will be guaranteed all along the project period.
