OPEN SPACE

Young actors of social transformation

Duration: 18 months – 17^th July 2017-16^st January 2019

Location: Italy, with a national scope. The planned initiatives will take place in 11 Regions involving an equal number of cities:

1. BASILICATA: Matera
2. CALABRIA: Crotone
3. CAMPANIA: Avellino
4. EMILIA ROMAGNA: Parma
5. LAZIO: Monterotondo (RM)
6. PIEDMONT: Ciriè-Settimo-Chivasso (TO)
7. PUGLIA: Manfredonia (FG)
8. SICILY: Palermo
9. TUSCANY: Empoli (FI)
10. UMBRIA: Orvieto (TR)
11. VENETO: Verona

 Applicant/Coordinator: UISP – Italian sport for all association

 Partners:

Uisp Local Committees of Matera, Crotone, Avellino, Parma, Monterotondo (RM), Ciriè-Settimo-Chivasso (TO), Manfredonia (FG), Palermo, Empoli (FI), Orvieto (TR), Verona

Funding body: Italian Ministry of Labor and Social Policies under the law 383/2000 - F / 2016 

SUMMARY:

Open Space project is targeted to young people between 16 and 24 years who are in social distress, especially NEET (not employed and not in education) and youth at risk social deviance. It envisages the establishment of Street Sport Crews (crews) in the suburbs of 11 Italian cities, addressed (through the co-design of sports activities and the rethinking of urban spaces for sports and social use) to the use and enhancement of public space for purposes of social reactivation and combating youth exclusion.

In fact, in the suburbs of the big cities the degradation of the structures and the lack of spaces of positive aggregation contribute to generate marginalization and social inactivity among the young.

Hence the idea of proposing to young people stimulating and motivating ways of enhancing their living space, making them protagonists of this change and of their own future project.

In particular, Street Sport (parkour, boardsports, street basketball, street soccer, etc.) proves to be a useful work tool with the target audience and for the purposes of enhancing public spaces, which thus become a social gym in the open, an open space for sports socialization.

The participants, constituted in Crew, a sort of "social crews" for the enhancement of common spaces, have thus given birth to social co-planning laboratories, redesigning the use and infrastructure of their territory, becoming this way actors of social transformation.

OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTED RESULTS:

• Testing a model of intervention aimed at combating social exclusion and youth inactivity and at the same time favouring the enhancement of the "road" as a common good / public space;
• Promote social reactivation and social and labor reintegration of young people in conditions of social hardship, in particular NEETs and young people at risk of deviance;
• Encourage active use by the local communities of public road / common good;
• To re-elaborate the peripheral urban spaces also as youth sporting aggregation;
• Expand the offer of sporting aggregation spaces and bring young people closer to them;
• Promote forms of active and responsible citizenship among young people;
• Promoting effective collaboration spaces between the different actors in the area are engaged in the protection / social and occupational reintegration of youth and in the enhancement of the common good;
• Inform and raise public awareness on the topics involved and opportunities offered by the intervention;
• Transfer of skills to young participants as trainers and Crew guide;
• Street Sport activities in the territories involved;
• Empowerment of participants: growth of those personal characteristics (behavioral, emotional, relational) indispensable for self-worth, self-esteem, self-fulfillment and the assumption of a role as active and responsible citizens.

PROJECT ACTIONS AND METHODOLOGY:

The applied methodologies foresee the direct involvement of young people in a confrontation with the community in the planning of the rethinking of the public space for sports use, according to a model of self-training shared "by" and "in" the group (peer education) methodologically valid for the purpose of improving youth creative abilities and an effective and positive action.

Thanks to the co-planning action of the Crews, degraded urban spaces have been transformed, rethought for sporting and social use and returned to citizenship.

Participants promoted the renewed places and  Street Sport activities through social media.

The project actions were facilitated in each city by a local coordinator and by the skills provided by UISP operators and experts.

For more information: progettazione@uisp.it

Website (IT):

Doc & Outputs (IT):

Galley: