Everybody go home!

About the critical issues that had to be dealt with by the CAPACITyES project, see what is written in the zoom in no. 2, in which the discrasies that characterise the relationship between planning and unpredictability are combined.
The mark left could be seen in the incursions of the many children who, running and screaming, interrupted and made it difficult for us adults, who tried to lend solemnity to the moment through our formal roles and professional speeches. Their questions, their ramblings, their noise provided the energy that sustained this festive moment 

Reality emerged powerfully and cut through the performance, the staging organised to celebrate the success of a journey, with its simple beauty. The reality made up of families from different cultures, with their rituals, their clothes, their ways of doing things, more or less suspicious of the 'other', more or less open to the 'other', which represented the high complexity that characterises this experiment in co-housing in Bergamo.

Cultures can meet and clash, history, magistra vitae, blatantly and perhaps shamelessly reminds us of this at every moment, whether in the present or from the archives of the past, which always emerges, well or badly interpreted, in defining contemporary relations. 

Then all of us, administrators, planners, social workers, politicians, citizens and inhabitants realise that things that seem difficult can find their way to simplicity, all it takes is a well-coordinated effort and an approach that is open in decision-making and well-tuned in promoting both interdisciplinary and skills-based dialogue:

Yet, things had not started in the best way. Against the backdrop of such a bold experiment as this multicultural cohousing scheme in a context of obvious difficulties in the work and socio-cultural integration of the target families, the dramatic externality of the pandemic had also been added, right at the critical and initial moment of the project. Finally, how can we forget, at this moment of clear success and consensus around the project, the initial moment when we opened the doors of this building. A building that for years had functioned as a psychiatric hospital for women only. On the walls of the building were still attached the drawings of the children, who stayed with their mothers, even though they were in mental distress. From the drawings transpired this deep unease and from every corner and room came a powerful perception of what had long been a place of profound human suffering. The remarkable added value of a project such as CAPACITyES is precisely this ability to positively reactivate places, to give them a second life, to regenerate a place of lost hope into a place of opportunity building for families in distress, but full of potential to express.

Another who speaks a different language, another who is economically less stable, another whose customs and traditions of the culture of origin we often ignore, but who asks us for hospitality and who offers us in return the possibility of improving ourselves, becoming an inclusive community, understanding what we can share of our private and professional experiences, broadening our perspectives in understanding certain logics (political, climatic, economic) on a global scale that regulate the current processes of urbanisation. 
The waste, abandoned, becomes, through innovative approaches, a place of inclusion, creation and construction of society. A new society that is formed by the propulsive thrust of women and children. Indeed, they are the protagonists of this regenerative process, for a place, and generative for a sense of citizenship. The children and women are the ice-breakers, the ones who get involved and colonise a space that has been thought of together, but which only becomes a place when it is occupied and begun to live there. This means that the challenges faced and solved so far, more or less effectively, open this place of living to new problems. In a way, this inauguration is not the conclusion, but a door opening onto a process of living and dwelling that still has many unknowns and potential conflicts. The presence of the conflicts to come is already evident on this inauguration day, where it is clear that some families still do not fully understand 'the rules' of this cohousing experience and use the occasion to highlight certain discomforts. A new and inclusive society, a new way of living, cannot ignore the presence of conflicts. The CAPACITyES project showed that this partnership, with clear political backing, has the means to manage and learn from these 'clashes' and turn them into 'encounters'. The tools used in the preparation phase based on listening actions, capacity building, must continue to be used especially now that the journey continues, but the rudder shifts into the hands of the families. That journey, which as a metaphor, as a common history, beyond the origins, has united in creating and characterising the context of this project, and is represented in the streets of Borgo Palazzo. A context that becomes matter and colour through the murals in the neighbourhood streets. Symbolic frescoes of a regenerative process (the evocative journey of Ulysses that stimulates the imagination of children, their creative and generative force. 

Using art to create community and a sense of belonging, learning trades to fit in and play a role in that community, and finding the end of a journey that brought the families involved to Bergamo, as a temporary stop or perhaps as a definitive landing place. Returning to the co-housing project, to its practical elements, there are many aspects still to be taken care of and refined in this planning process, keeping them in mind, even in this transitional phase defined by the conclusion of EU funding, may help to sanction a sustainable development of this innovative regeneration experiment carried out in Borgo Palazzo: