A network of local associations supports the Jesi Municipality in the activation of an unused urban space located between the neighbourhoods of Prato, Minonna and Smia. Through a participatory process that involves residents, creatives, young people and district committees, the Cara Città project aims to transform an inactive building into an open space, capable of welcoming social, artistic and cultural activities that answer the emerging needs of the community.
Project news
Why Cara Città
Cara Città (Dear City) is born from the willingness to inhabit one’s city in a new way. By gathering different people of all ages who have always lived in Jesi or that have returned after years spent elsewhere- people united by a shared feeling of disorientation and a longing for connection and sharing– Cara Città promotes a series of social and participative activities to revitalize an unused public space and foster new practices of urban living.
With the awareness that the spaces we attend, mix with and live have effects on the civic everyday life and on the transformative charge of our imagination, Cara Città experiments our use of art, culture and creativity to explore who we actually want to be. Belonging to a city is reflected in the way we live and care for shared spaces.
The space
The project involves the city of Jesi, a municipality of the Marche region that counts 39,000 residents, in the province of Ancona, characterized – like many other cities of the Italian province – by a demographic trend of population ageing, but, at the same time, by a peculiar phenomenon: an increase of the people who choose to move to or return to Jesi from other municipalities or from abroad, bringing with them specialized skills and an aspiration to build a career in the creative and cultural field.
Cara Città will re-qualificate a municipal property space: an 80 sqm ground-floor building located at via Urbani 19, near the historic centre and the train station.
The space will host activities organized by partners but also by citizens and other local organizations interested in implementing social and cultural activities.
The Cara Città project fits in a process started by the Municipality of Jesi in order to strengthen the citizen participation to the city’s public life – a process, until now, carried out by creating District Committees, i.e. free assemblies made by residents or elected citizens that represent the district’s instances.
The activities
The urban regeneration process foresees the construction of a collective narration made by the community, through a participatory mapping and a social and cultural co-design of the activities that will animate the space.
The participatory mapping, inspired by the community-based editorial methodology of the Nonturismo project, will allow us to identify and engage the people, associations and informal groups that make up the social fabric of the district.
It will be achieved via a series of workshops that use collective writing, photography, guided walks and emotional mapping, aimed to explore the neighbourhoods and spark collective imagination.
The pathway will result in a three-pronged output: a photographic book that will be presented on the next edition of the Ratatà festival, a mural that will be created in the district, and a calendar of the social and cultural activities hosted in the physical space.
Who we are
Active for 27 years in the Vallesina and Fabriano area, Arci Jesi Fabriano is a non-profit association that fosters the sociocultural development of the territory thanks to its rich network of affiliated associations and initiatives that place creativity at the service of marginalized communities. Since 2013, it has entered the prisons of the Marche region with Scolpire il Movimento, an animation workshop for incarcerated people, and with ANIMArap, which offers training for third sector workers and two workshops – one on rap and one on animation – inside the Pesaro prison. Arci JF also designs exhibitions and talks on important political themes: in 2023 it launched Utopie Minacciate, la rivoluzione in Kurdistan with SlumilCinko and photojournalist Mauricio Centurión, and in 2024 it took part in Ratatà Festival with the exhibition Art for Palestine, which was the result of a call for emerging artists organized with the Tinals collective.
Sineglossa is a cultural organization that applies contemporary art processes to the challenges of our times. We pursue transdisciplinary approaches capable of confronting complexity and promoting models of sustainable development. By blending humanitarian and scientific contamination, we seek beautiful, sustainable and inclusive solutions. That’s why we work within hybrid ecosystems involving artists, scientists, entrepreneurs and humanists – but also universities, public administration and local communities. We believe in the fundamental social role of culture and we commit to the promotion of cultural innovation. Sineglossa is an official partner of the New European Bauhaus, a movement launched by Ursula Von Der Leyen to erect a beautiful, inclusive and sustainable Green Deal.
Circolo Culturale Jesino Massimo Ferretti was founded in 1973 and has developed over the years as a photography club. Today 160 members are active. The association organizes courses on basic photography, photographic narration and in-depth studies on analog and digital photography. It vaunts a space purely dedicated to film photography with a dark room open to its associates. The association organizes collective photographic exhibitions and helps support the associates in their personal displays. Over the years it has developed photographic projects focused on social themes that concerned the seismic areas of Italy’s center in 2016, and has partered with associations to promote awareness and understanding of the territory and the overcoming of disabilities through photography. The association is domiciliated in the municipal spaces of via Politi 27 and has a course room that can welcome a maximum of 50 sitting people with a video projector, a meeting room with a maxi screen, a small posing room, a dark room and a library containing volumes of photography.
Ratatà is a cultural association that works both nationally and internationally, with roots in the Marche region since 2014, organizing cultural events focused on contemporary drawing world and visual arts. The association organizes, besides other things, the Ratatà festival, an event previously held in Macerata, and now in Jesi, dedicated to comics, illustration and independent publishing. Ratatà was born out of a collaboration between artists, cartoonists, illustrators, publishing houses, social spaces, and passionate individuals about the different contemporary artistic forms and languages. The association encourages social and cultural cooperation among diverse entities and subjectivities who share the goal to reposition culture and sociability at the center of everyday life. The interventions suggested by Ratatà aim to have a viral impact in public spaces, in order to redefine their function and use, to reimagine a territory crossed by events that can highlight the need for culture as a catalyst for social growth; it could be the place of production instead of an endless sequence of enclosed spaces; it may thrive on communal goods and places, in contrast to the non-places of the passive consumption that erodes both land and knowledge; a territory fully lived by a community that wants to recapture its own time and space, in the diverse and multifaceted experiences of self-management and self-determination.
KAR uses creativity to experiment and imagine new approaches and solutions to social and contemporary challenges. Care, listening, artistic languages and shared planning are used as tools to connect territories and people. KAR develops initiatives centered on community, youth engagement, integration and envisioningthe future. KAR movimenti creativi. Human connection for open communities.
Acca is an academy founded in 1999 devoted to the training in different areas of the visual arts, among which are Comics, Illustration, Animation, Graphic Design, Web Design and Videogames, and combines experience with the willingness to continuously innovate its own study plan. New languages and media more closely linked to tradition are integrated into the context of an educational project with an experimental character. The goal is to develop in the students an experimental attitude, critical-theorical abilities, and the competencies needed to face the plurality of languages that define current creative research and the modern professional landscape. ACCA Academy is located in Jesi, Roma, Torino and Milan.
Casa delle Culture
Casa delle Culture, since 1999 committed to the territory of Jesi in the processes of cultural, educational and social integration, identifies in the knowledge of the other and in direct and conscious participation the indispensable conditions for a democratic society. The objective of the Association is to be a place of encounter and exchange of experiences between people of different cultures in order to promote sociability, mutualism, participation and the development of a sense of community, and to contribute to the cultural and civil growth of its members and of the entire community. The Association organizes language courses, linguistic-cultural mediation services, intercultural workshops, meetings and events with male and female authors. It envisions shared paths with public and private institutions, associations, and schools of every level and type. Since 2007, the Anti-violence Help Desk “Casa delle Donne” has been established within the Association, offering welcome, help and support to women victims of gender-based violence, thanks to the commitment of social workers, psychologists and lawyers who voluntarily and freely offer their skills. Internal training courses and courses aimed at new volunteer workers are held periodically.
Comune di Jesi
Credits
Cara città is a project curated by Sineglossa, in collaboration with Arci Jesi-Fabriano, Comune di Jesi, Kar Movimenti Creativi, Circolo Ferretti, Ratatà, Acca Academy, Casa delle Culture, and made with the support of Fondazione Cariverona.
