From the 2nd to the 6th of October 2023, YEU and its partners in the Place Making for Inclusion (PM4I) project went to Palermo, Sicily, to carry out the project’s first mobility. The mobility consisted of a 5-day-long training course for 24 youth workers, educators and others working with placemaking in their local communities.
The programme of the training course consisted of diverse sessions and was co-created by all the project’s partners. It was kicked-off by YEU – as the coordinating organization – with an overall introduction to the project, project partners and outcomes so far. This was followed by the introduction to concepts of placemaking and inclusion by our partner.
In the following days, the training course included sessions on diverse outcomes of the project, such as its Competence Framework and different tools. The Competence Framework was presented through a “Spin the Wheel of Competences”, in this way, participants were able to work more in detail on each of the competences identified by the partnership in previous project stages.
Participants were likewise introduced and got the opportunity to test out tools from the PM4I Cookbook – a toolkit that has been invented and included with input from all the project partners. To this, YEU’s Fundraising and Project Officer, Tenna Sørensen Jochumsen, facilitated the part connected to two of YEU’s tools called “Your access is my access” and “Mission impossible: pick up after your bestie!”.
“Your access is my access” focuses on accessibility in our cities. It invited the participants to ‘put themselves in others’ shoes’ by taking a route in the local neighbourhood in a wheelchair. In this way, the participants were able to experience the Sicilian neighbourhood from a different perspective, reflect upon this experience and on more inclusive alternatives to be implemented in the local community.
“Mission impossible: pick up after your bestie!” aims to create cleaner cities. During the testing phase in the training course, participants were given a pink spray (environmentally friendly) with which they were spraying excrements from pets in the street. The tool is invented to create awareness and encourage pet owners to pick up after their pets in public spaces but can also be used for trash, cigarette butts and the like.
Lastly, the training course’s sessions allowed time to test the project’s augmented reality app and e-learning platform, which are both digital tools to support the place making for inclusion project and implementation of the cookbook as well as to offer other opportunities for placemaking in one’s cities and local communities.
The training course was hosted by our partner, Sguardi Urbani and took place in two locations:
- MoltiVolti (many faces): a restaurant and social business in the heart of the Ballarò district in Palermo, which has become a good practice in the field of migrant hospitality and inclusion.
- Cre.zi.plus: a contemporary site of cultural production in Zisa neighborhood where incubation and fruition coexist. A welcoming place for training, sharing, culture, business, work and free time.
On top of that, we had the opportunity to discover a rich variety of local associations and spaces such as:
- Arci Porco Rosso (red pig association): a collective laboratory of anti-fascist and anti-racist political ideas and practices in Ballaró neighborhood.
- Casa di Tutte le Genti (house of all people): voluntary association in Zisa neighborhood supporting needy families with a children center managed by immigrant women.
- Booq: an intercultural and intergenerational neighborhood library that combines culture and sociality, knowledge and practices, accessibility and rights. It was born from an action of reappropriation and care of a space abandoned for years in the historic center of Palermo for the opening of a social library.
- Neu [nòi]: a community-oriented coworking space in the heart of Palermo offering desks, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, events and more to its guests.
WHAT’S NEXT?
In the meantime, we are approaching the project’s next mobility – a Youth Exchange – which will take place in Brussels, Belgium, next month from the 16th to the 21st of November and culminate with its International Conference in our partners’ new venue, Track (Brussels North Station). We hope you will join us there!
