EIT Community Ignite NEB
DS4Planet Festival
September 16
Online Kick-off
September 21-22
Design Hackathon
PARTICIPATIVE FUTURES 4PLANET
At Teatro Spazio Centrale
Sondrio – Località Arquino
artistiche
75 enrolled for 50 changemakers, 14 experts identified 5 future scenarios, 10 ideas for reconnection with nature were developed, 6 judges, 6 coaches, and 2 artistic performances were part of the event EIT Community Ignite NEB – Design Sprint 4Planet Festival, the first design hackathon in the province of Sondrio.
After the online Kick-off on September 16, the Festival took place on Saturday, September 21, and Sunday, September 22, 2024, hosted by the Abriga.it association at the Teatro Spazio Centrale in Sondrio, Arquino locality.
During the Festival, we aimed to collaboratively design 10 new product/service proposals that promoted reconnection—and new connections—with Nature, embracing a deep and climate-resilient vision, and integrating speculative future thinking approaches and design tools.
‘Beautiful, Sustainable and Together’ are the key values of the New European Bauhaus program, which has chosen Studio Shift and Valtellina as one of the four venues for the 2024 events. The program invites all European citizens to actively participate in the redesign of their communities, with a focus on collaboration and sustainability.
During the Festival, interdisciplinary groups were formed among the participants (designers, environmental experts, artists, entrepreneurs, and design students from major Italian academies) to address future challenges, divided into two categories: business and community impact.
Two of the ideas generated during the Festival were awarded €1,000 and will have access to an NEB Grow incubation program worth €10,000 (in services) with Studio Shift.
The winning ideas were identified by eight judges, according to the New Bauhaus criteria:
- Natalia Vera Perez, Delegate of the European New Bauhaus Program
- Carlo Brigatti, President of FabLab Sondrio
- Giusi Biaggi, Social Entrepreneur – President of Consorzio Nazionale CGM
- Giovanni Caruso, Founder e Chapter Leader of Speculative Futures Milan
- Silvio Cioni, Director of Education at Domus Academy
- Elena Giunta, current Director of Studio Shift and Lecturer at the Design School of Politecnico di Milano and the Master’s in Eco-Social Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
- Davide Menegola, President of the Province of Sondrio
- Elena Plos, Mayor of Le CA Village delle Alpi
The Contribution of Art
Following the tradition of the German Bauhaus, the venue chosen for the event hosted two performances, which participants experienced as nourishment for thought and an emotional experience, always centered on the theme of reconnection with nature.
On Saturday, September 21, the day concluded with the dancer Selene Tognoli, who presented a contemporary work in which the body explored its primitive self to rediscover fragility and deep energies.
Selene was born in Valtellina in 1998 and has studied classical and contemporary dance at the Civica Scuola di Musica, Danza e Teatro in Sondrio. In 2020, she graduated as a dancer and choreographer from the Scuola Civica di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan. Since 2022, she has been living between Berlin and Italy, working as a performer and choreographer. She is the founder of the TangoLibero project (Berlin) and is active in the Valtellina region, particularly with site-specific projects connected to the natural and artificial spaces that host her performances.
On the afternoon of Sunday, September 22, before the announcement of the winners, there was the performance of the female choir Di Nota in Nota. The director Michele Franzina presented pieces from the choir’s repertoire that told the story of our mountains, the blooming of flowers, and the grass through seasons that were now changing and no longer recognizable. Hymns to a Nature that past generations valued as a key principle and which needed to return to the center of our community’s best energies.
The repertoire proposed by the female choir Di Nota in Nota combines works by major authors of traditional, national, and international vocal music with significant modern pieces, unique songs for their lyricism and meaning, or compositions featured in the soundtracks of cinematic masterpieces. In September 2014, the female choir Di Nota in Nota became the new artistic venture of the former Coro Giovani Cantori Giuseppe Fumasoni of Berbenno di Valtellina, continuing and expanding upon the growth of its younger members. Currently, the choir is registered with USCI Sondrio, the Union of Italian Choral Societies, Provincial Delegation of Sondrio, and FEDERCORI, the Federation of Italian Choirs Chorus Inside.
Reconnecting with nature is an act of love towards ourselves and our planet. It is an invitation to slow down, to view the world with new eyes, and to remember that in every leaf, every breath of wind, every wave of the sea, there is a part of us. And only when we restore that connection can we truly feel complete, inspired, and in harmony.
On Sunday, September 22, at the Teatro Spazio Centrale in Arquino (Sondrio), it was possible to attend the presentation of the ideas developed by the participants of the Festival.
