LeCAKE in Italy
From May 1st to May 6th LeCAKE’s consortium moved to Italy, specifically to Rieti and Rocca Sinibalda, associated partners of the project. This was the first in-person meeting of four (Italy, France, Germany, Greece) that the project will have along its lifetime.
Each partner joined the week in the Bel Paese with a senior professional and two Young Ambassadors. It has been a powerful week to do team building among people that met live for the first time. This trip allowed everyone to get inspired by different places and people, and it has been an important step towards a full training regarding culture and sustainable development.
The content of the week
Once arrived in Rieti, the whole group was divided into 4 smaller groups to work on specific local cultural challenges and projects. Many cultural actors, led by Teatro Rigidon (who hosted this meeting in Italy), are pushing for developing a village of knowledge in the rural area of the city, a place where culture can bloom and at the same time include local and international artists, while preserving the environment. Another project in the list of the Rieti’s municipality is the creation of an European cultural hub in the basement of Teatro Flavio Vespasiano, downtown Rieti.
How to create a sustainable valley of artists, how to attract local artists to the hub, how to develop green infrastructures and projects given the local context? The groups tried to answer these questions through a brainstorming process. They also visited the valley and the theater to be more inspired.
A third challenge was launched by the Municipality of Rocca Sinibalda, in connection to the innovative project Green Communities, a concrete funded project grouping other nine cities, which aims at developing a green and at the same time technological society and network.
One of the biggest questions to answer was related to how the cultural sector in these small cities (with just a few hundreds of inhabitants) can act as a booster for community engagement and participation.
For almost three days, after institutional meetings and local visits (Piana Reatina, Rocca Sinibalda’s Castle…) the groups presented the results of their brainstorming through a Pecha Kucha, an innovative way of carrying out a presentation with only 20 slides, only 20 images, no text and only 20 seconds per slide. The idea was to be as effective as possible.
Many ideas came out that will be presented to the municipalities and probably implemented.
The people involved
At the end of the week, most of the participants realized that the group was composed not only by cultural professionals, but that there was an extremely high diversity in the backgrounds of each person. There were managers, physicists, researchers, teachers and so on and so forth. Such diversity was very appreciated because it was a value-added element along the week and its effect was clear during the presentations and in the final results.
The week in itself was important for creating connections and consolidating the consortium. Working remotely on such an interesting project is not always easy, so it was essential to meet, exchange opinions and ideas, and also have fun in front of a good amatriciana!
The next step of the project
The week in Italy was helpful to get inspired and brainstorm about green cultural projects, where we tried to put into practice the knowledge acquired during the first semester of LeCAKE. What is next? The consortium, led the coming semester by The Shift Project, will deeply investigate the decarbonisation of the cultural sector, from the sources of the problems until the main actions to be taken to find sustainable solutions and concretely act.
The training is going on. The eight partners will become truly expert and they will share such knowledge to their local network.
See you soon in Paris!