BRINGING FORWARD THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL PROJECT OF LABORATORIO DEL CAMMINO

 

Who are we?

We are a group of students, researchers and non-academics motivated to use the walk as a way of gaining a better understanding of contemporary spatial and social phenomena. We belong to the fields of planning, architecture and urbanism and we are based in Turin Polytechnic (Italy) and in other six Italian Universities (view our network). Our core aim is to investigate territorial vulnerabilities and to analyze the ways in which these affect the conditions of habitability of cities and territories. We do that by walking along a territorial section of Italy, building a multi-sensory and in motion immersion into places, in a process of discovering, reflecting and learning through an embodied experience. While walking, we carry on a continuous process of knowledge exchange with local communities for conceiving and sharing with them possible solutions and interventions to improve current conditions. 

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Why crowdfunding?

We would like to bring forward our cultural and social project by continuing to work with university students and local communities to achieve two goals: the first is to help students to improve their ability to observe and study contemporary cities and territories and to intervene on them through place-based and sustainable solutions. The second goal is to share and disseminate this knowledge to local administrators and communities for increasing their capacity to positively cope, through actions and policies, with territorial vulnerabilities.

 

As a first result of our project, we will organize an open exhibition that will take place in Turin (Italy) from October 26th. The exhibition will be the final event of a self-organised training project, named Summer School “Sicilia coast to coast”, a territorial walk that in August 2018 will bring a group of 32 students and researchers coming from all over Italy to reflect upon and investigate territorial fragilities of Sicily by walking for ten days across the west side of the island, from Mazara del Vallo (TP) to Palermo, meeting researchers, local administrators and communities. 

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How the money raised will be spent?

• an open exhibition that will take place in Turin (Italy) in October 2018. The exhibition will be presenting the results of the Summer School “Sicilia coast to coast” through the projects made by the students during the territorial walk across Sicily. Each of the seven teams of students will present a set of pictures, maps and drawings in A1 and A2 formats that will give back a scenario of possible solutions and interventions addressed to local administrators and communities to positively cope with and recover from territorial fragilities. The money raised will be used also to buy the equipment needed (panels, supports, grapples) and to print the promotion materials.

• a master thesis scholarship of 500 euros to be granted through open call that will be launched in the universities part of the Laboratorio del Cammino network. The thesis should be consistent with the aims of Laboratorio del Cammino (read the manifesto) and should use the walk as the main thesis' methodological approach.

• a donation to a non-profit association of 500 euros based in Sicily, which will be chosen by the Laboratorio del Cammino's Scientific Committee on the basis of its active involvement on raising the awareness of local communities towards the protection, promotion and enhancement of natural and environmental resources.

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Where we came from...

LdC was born in 2017 as the evolution of “ViaSalaria” (watch the video), a workshop that brought a group of students and young researchers to investigate the process of earthquake recovery in the centre of Italy by walking through the damaged villages, interacting with local populations affected by the earthquakes and getting to analyse the rationalities of the process of reconstruction. 

In the first half of 2018, we have organised a number of cultural events, seminar and initiatives. On March 22nd, LdC and DiST invited Daniela Allocca from University l’Orientale of Naples to give a seminar titled “Pratiche Cartografiche. La percezione dello spazio in relazione a scrittura e cammino”. Daniela explored the relationship between language, writing and spaces/places and she explained why and how our perception of space and places is strongly linked to narratives and how vice-versa places influence narratives.

On May 25th, the first urban night walk “Attraverso i Margini” took place across Aurora and Barriera neighborhoods in Torino, involving more than 30 people with the guide of three young storytellers, Elena Pede, Tatiana Bazzi and Karl Kraehmer. The event was part of the second edition of PoliTO Sustainability Weeks, two weeks of initiatives and meetings coordinated by the Green Team aimed at raising awareness among researchers and students about environmental and social sustainability. 

June has been an intense month with two seminars organised by Laboratorio del Cammino. The first one was the Lectio magistralis "Vivere in Cammino" by Giovanni Chiaramonte, one of the masters of contemporary landscape photography, which took place on June 15th at Castello del Valentino, in cooperation with Ikonemi. Chiaramonte has reflected upon the need of representation as a constitutive element of human beings and he dealt with the main theme of his work: the relationship between place and destiny in Western civilization. 

Three days later, on June 18th, the LdC, in cooperation with ABC & DASTU (Politecnico di Milano), organised the seminar “Il senso del camminare. Racconti territoriali e urbanistica”. Speakers of the seminar were Giampaolo Nuvolati, Gianni Biondillo, Sebastiano Brandolini and Stefano Munarin that discussed together and with the audience on the use of experiential walking as a way to challenge the ways to observe, describe and investigate contemporary urban landscapes.

 

For more info, please send a mail to laboratoriodelcammino@gmail.com or visit our campaign page https://www.fundandseek.com/laboratorio

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