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| In in Via Cenni (Milano) the first seeds are planted |
It is time
to break the silence that Food in the Streets left you with in the last weeks. Let
me tell you what I’ve been up to and show you some of the first results.
Since
autumn this year I am working with Noemi Satta on a project called ZUP – the
recipe for change. ZUP is an abbreviation for Zuppa (=Italian for soup)
Urban Project and was founded in 2010. It is Noemi Satta who has developed this
method which, over the past years, has proven to be very useful in cases where
(complex) situations ask involvement of many or where new visions on ‘the
usual’ are required.
If one
follows a ZUP lab you and your group mates will
go through a list of about five questions and tasks. This results in a personal
recipe that can be a starting point of a longer process. What this process is
and how long it takes, depends on the question(s) posed by the client.
Unfortunately
it is not always simple to explain in a few words what a ZUPlab exactly is.
Therefore I will go into more detail and bring you a short report of what we
did last Saturday. Soon enough you will get to understand it and see also the
relation with Food in the Streets and that what I usually talk about in this
blog.
Saturday
morning at Via Cenni started early but with a hot cup of
tea and a freshly backed cake. In this case the aim of the ZUPlab was to
involve the inhabitants of the social housing project in the design of the four
urban gardens they wish to start on their rooftop terraces.
After a short
introduction on the ECO Courts project, the twenty garden-enthusiasts
that participated were divided in four groups. Their first task was to describe
in one word what an urban garden means to them. After five minutes we collected
the answers of each individual and exposed them on a whiteboard and shared them.
There were of course values that were shared by more than one person (like
‘relax’) while others were unique. Anyways, we had a starting point from which
we could continue.
The second
question we asked them, was to write down three characteristics (values, wishes
and qualities) that they wanted to plant. ‘Plant’ because in this case the
recipe that we wanted them to make in the end, is to be translated in a design
for the garden on their terraces. The next step was to share the personal
characteristics between the group members and extract six characteristics shared
by all the group members. Now each group knew their shared characteristics they
could work on in the next step.
For the
third and last step, the participants where provided with a list of ingredients
that coincided with the seeds that they would later plant in their garden. Each
group was asked to relate an ingredient (for example bread, rosemary or
egg-plant) to each of the characteristics they named before. The relation
between characteristic and ingredient was to be interpreted by the group: some
choose to connect the characteristic ‘sharing’ with the ingredient ‘parsley’
because for them this ingredient represents something that can be added to
every dish and goes along with everyone. Continuing this way, the participants
wrote down the ingredients of that what had to become a recipe in the last
part of lab.
After not
even two hours of work, the inhabitants of Via Cenni had written down four
recipes with beautiful names like ‘The garden under the stars’ named after one
of the ingredients or ‘The smells of the Mediterranean’ because of the presence
of typical Mediterranean products like zucchini and thyme. You see, this is the
food, people and cities that I promised you to talk about. And if you don’t
understand, check the photo’s.
After this part of the program, the work of the inhabitants moved outside, where they
literally started to plant the seeds for their garden. Food in the Streets stayed
behind her desk and will make the plans of the gardens.
The inhabitants of Via
Cenni continue their work in two weeks, when Orti d’Azienda comes to give a lecture on the technical part of
gardening and when the seeds and plants will be put in the right place. I’ll
promise you to write about this as well.
