Pietro Bova (p) /Epainos Award Candidate

Stefano Aragona

This paper illustrates the impact on the student community of the EDU project of the Italian Youth Association for UNESCO, in terms of social innovation and in some cases with participatory actions research, in the context of the policies for the Italian ecological transition. The results obtained from 2019 will be illustrated, the year in which AIGU started an impact monitoring through surveys proposed to more than 2000 students and teachers involved (in 20 Italian regions). The EDU project, born in 2017, had as main topics the “2030 Agenda” from 2019 and the “Faro convention” from 2022. From the beginning One of the aim of EDU was give knowledge and skills related to the ecological transition and the link between: 1) heritage (cultural, audio-visual, architectural, landscaped and natural); 2) well-being. Among the various regional projects, the EDU project of the Calabria Region entitled "Photovoice & Landscape" will be explored in this paper. In the calabrian case, EDU brought the students involved and the local decision makers to dialogue using a PAR methodology called “photovoice”. It is noted that the EDU project held in Calabria involved the student community which identifies itself as powerless with respect to territorial policies. Moreover, the calabrian case is in an inner area in which SNAI had foreseen the activation of civic monitoring on Monithon but without success.
The PAR methodology used in Calabria allowed students to develop proposals and questions to suggest policy guidelines to local decision makers. In addition, the skills to be able to monitor the spending of European funds through open data found on “Open Coesione” were transferred to the students, includind skills to use an online platform for a simple civic monitoring ("Monithon”). Finally, considerations will be placed on the usefulness of PAR's visual methodologies, such as the declinations of the photovoice, to initiate social innovation processes useful for the creation of energy communities as well as pro-actives communities in the ecological transition.

Stefano Aragona (p)

Pietro Bova

We destroy the beauty of the landscape because the splendors of nature,
freely available, they have no economic value.
We would be able to put out the sun and the stars because they don't pay a dividend
J.M. Keynes

Starting from environmental and social unsustainability, the paper proposes the rethinking of territorialization or reterritorialization paths. Highlight some key elements to build the ecological transition. Knowing that implementing the ecological approach takes time, remembering that the industrial city has taken over 350 years to establish itself. It highlights that planning and urban planning are increasingly land and city management and that the object of interest is the existing one, its maintenance or transformation having the common good as its guiding star.