WORKSHOPS
The workshops last from the morning of Friday, 27th of September until the evening of Saturday, 28th. In the evening the works will be discusses publicly together with all participants, partners, the speakers of the conference day and invited special guests. We will create an participatory playground for this and smoothly glide into a festa. On Saturday for registered participants food will be served for free. On Friday the workshops go on excursion and collaborate with the external partners on their locations. Saturday they will take place at the Faculty of Design and Arts, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Piazza Università, 1. Apply for the workshops until 8th of September.
Brave New Alps & Adam und Epfl
Paradise by design? Elaborating proposals for diversity fostering regional developments
The South-Tyrolean area of Upper Vinschgau is undergoing drastic changes in agricultural practices as industrialised apple cultivation is making its way up the valley — inevitably affecting the local economy, the environment, the quality of life and cultural practices. Many farmers and landowners welcome this profitable change, while ever more local inhabitants are raising concerns about the consequences of monocultures on the ecosystem as well as on the homogenisation of the landscape.
In this context, the local citizen initiative Adam&Epfl, constituted in 2011, wants to foster debates around the profit-driven changes occurring in agriculture and their effects on the region. Acknowledging that the valley needs economic developments, A&E also believe that these would benefit from participatory decision making processes in order to generate proposals for developments that could simultaneously assure a strong regional economy, a healthy environment to live in and culturally diverse living-practices.
Thus, A&E ask, What would a paradisal upper Vinschgau look and feel like? What economic activities could sustain a desirable quality of life in the valley? By what means can unsustainable seductions be resisted? How to make the ongoing process of transformation a participatory, inclusive and pro-positive one?
The aim of the workshop is to engage with these questions and to develop concrete design proposals that could contribute to sustainable developments in the area. An on-site participatory mapping of the multiplicity of actors and actants involved in the current state of affairs in the Upper Vinschgau will constitute the entry point for your design process.
Starting from this mapping, in groups of two, you will identify an involved actor and actant from which to begin to design: each of them represents an entry point to the local issues and can act as a potential agent of change in the complex system of relations that is already in place. In what way could your proposal make a difference in as many fields as possible?
Your design proposals will be presented to Adam&Epfl as well as to the wider public on Saturday, 28 September at 6pm. They will also be collected in an instant publication, which will serve A&E as a trigger for further discussions in the Upper Vinschgau.
Cecilia Palmer & l’Orto semi-rurali
Community development and design
The workshop aims to explore means of sustainable, collaborative design in practice and to gather a community in a joint effort in creating shelter for L’Orto Semirurali Garten using upcycled material. During a 2-day practical, collaborative session, the workshop will bring together students, the garden community and everyone in the neighborhood interested in getting to know L’Orto Semirurali Garten in a practical way.
We will work with upcycled materials, consisting of mainly worn clothing as a material base, in order to build the shelter that will be used to give shade and as a place to get together in the garden in the coming seasons.
During the two days we will collect worn clothing from the surrounding community and setup a temporary sewing workshop in L’Orto Semirurali Garten. Everyone is invited to join us making, sewing, cutting, remodeling and building this shelter together. We hope that after these two days, many hands will have assembled a patchwork sheet large enough to provide shade for the community during hot, sunny days.
Clothing, worn but clean, can be donated to the garden in advance (clothing accepted at the University or at the Donne Nissà Association between 9.30-12.30 Monday to Friday) or brought during the event.
The garden provides us with food, which together with shelter and clothing sum up our most basic material needs as humans. This workshop touches all three of these essential cornerstones, as well as how we can design or interact with them.
The natural loop in a garden is evident – we prepare the soil, plant the seeds, grow our crops, harvest them, prepare food from them and use the left-overs for compost to prepare new soil, and so the cycle of life goes on. Our clothing, on the other hand, is nowadays mostly a product of a globalized industry, wasting both natural and human resources, with thousands of tons of textiles ending up in landfill each year. It is an industry that creates a huge amount of waste, withvery little going back into the natural loop.
Upcycling design initiatives seek to find ways to complete this cycle of of resource use, in a similar way to that which happens in a garden. After all, most of us have a staple of clothing at the back of our wardrobes that we don’t use anymore, that might be out of fashion or might not fit anymore, but that is still of good quality. These are the resources that we seek to bring back into the loop by re-creating new garments or objects, in this case a shelter.
About
BRAVE NEW ALPS
About Brave New Alps and Communication and Design for Partecipatory Regional Development
The language of the workshops will be a pragmatical mix of English, German and Italian. For the workshop with Brave New Alps & Adam und Epfl it is useful to understand German, while for the workshop with Cecilia Palmer & l’Orto semi-rurali a minimum understanding of Italian might come in handy (but is not an absolute necessity).