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About the project
How can decentralized areas get us thinking and living circularly?
Under the framework of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) movement and after the initiative of Frontignano Art Walks – the land art project localized in the mountain area of Frontignano di Ussita (MC) curated by Sineglossa curated between 2021 and 2022 – Sineglossa will produce a new podcast concerning the topic of sustainability in decentralized areas.
The initiative is supported by a programme of the NEB movement. NEB (New European Bauhaus) includes a series of activities, funds and strategies to promote an economy based on circularity for tackling unsustainable practices, including resource uses for obsolete buildings or infrastructures. Addressing these challenges concerns the entire industrial ecosystem, from production to delivery and consumption, from cities to decentralized areas, with a circular economy mindset. It concerns the use of sustainably produced and procured nature-based building materials, new production technologies helpful for carbon footprint reduction, new business models, bioeconomy, social economy approaches and Design for Sustainability. All those ways can support the transformation of sectors such as textiles, tourism, waste management or energy production.
Within this framework, Sineglossa has proposed a podcast addressed to investigate and divulge how the decentralized area of Frontignano (Ussita, MC) is tackling the challenge of circular economy. The podcast will be produced as a citizen engagement activity focused on the inhabited places and on our relationship with natural environments. A podcaster will conduct field research by involving citizens in the redesigning and storytelling of local economic models.
Who supports it: New European Bauhaus
The New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative is an enabler for the green transition of our societies and economy. It calls on all Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future. It aims at transforming different sectors of the economy, especially the built environment, making them contribute to our climate goals and to an improvement of the quality of life of all citizens. The New European Bauhaus activates different actors at different levels, from big companies to citizens’ initiatives, from national governments to city councils. It is a project of hope and perspectives that bring a cultural and creative dimension to the Green Deal- the European Climate Agenda- to enhance sustainable innovation, technology and economy.
To build a liveable future together, the European Commission announced some development tools to identify how the values and principles of the NEB initiative can translate into concrete projects. One of these is the NEB Compass. The NEB Compass describes the three core values of the initiative – participatory process, multi-level engagement and a transdisciplinary approach – and traces the path for a project to become truly “NEB”. The Compass also focuses on the capacity of NEB projects to test and promote new visions and processes, with a long-term vision.
This Compass will be the fundamental toolkit that partner and podcaster will follow and apply during the production of the Frontignano podcast.
Who supports it: European Institute of Innovation and Technology
The funding call where Frontignano podcast has been presented and selected is an initiative promoted not only by NEB but also by another important European entity working on innovation and application of European values. It’s EIT, an acronym standing for European Institute of Innovation & Technology, an entity of the European Union that represents the European largest innovation network and is an integral part of Horizon Europe, the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. One of the “global challenges” EIT is promoting for innovation and green transformation is the one related to Culture and Creativity sectors. EIT Culture & Creativity is a Knowledge and Innovation Community that’s bringing together all creatives to rethink how we live as Europeans. That includes rethinking the way we currently run our cultural and creative sectors and industries from fashion to film and empowering creatives to transform it according to their vision of the green and digital transitions.
Why a podcast on circular economy on the Highlands
The podcast tells how the local communities in Frontignano di Ussita, throughout their present and past history, have adopted virtuous behaviors of recovering raw materials, reducing waste, using natural energy sources, promoting sustainable economic models based on the circularity of resources. This reportage is based on the on-site activities that Sineglossa run in the last 5 years, starting from the Nonturismo project, which ended with the publication of the nontouristic guide Ussita, Monti Sibillini. Deviazioni inedite raccontate dagli abitanti (Ediciclo, 2020) and of 7 audio itineraries produced by podcaster Sara Sartori.
The cooperation with the Frontignano community continued through the Frontignano Art Walks project, in which the architects of orizzontale spent several periods in residence to turn discourses on natural and inhabited space into two architectural installations for the local community and tourists.
How many more stories do these lands have to tell? And how much do these stories to teach about the circularity of resources, the reuse of materials, and the sustainability of our past and future times? Building on this journey, journalist and podcaster Sara Sartori will return to Frontignano to explore how the inland, mountainous and earthquake-affected territory of Frontignano embodies, in the history of its productive economies – from the era of the development of the ski enterprise, to the period of rebuilding, to the current relationship with a tourism-driven mountainous areas – virtuous examples of economic and environmental sustainability.
