Our starting point was around the reflection on the state of the art of the chosen project area - the ancient Venice Arsenale, set in the heart of the city - and around what it represents for the city nowadays. After having being for centuries the centre of the Venetian economy and strategic to the Venetian power of the seas, it hase became a marginal and disused area but with a great potential for the future for both, its symbolic value and its functional role.
Our E- event started from the necessity to use the Arsenale of Venice as a driver for the recreation of a sense of community of the whole city of Venice, threatened by the mass tourism, before, and now by the consequences of the pandemia. A city that suffers from a unique economic crisis as a consequence of the decline of tourism in a monofunctional city.
Now the Arsenale is used only for hosting events, the contrary of what it was, the cruddle of the trade and production of the Serenissima Republic.
Now it is an empty space, of great architectural value, so far a lost opportunity but it represents a great potential for the future of the city. The strongest lever for a positive change.
The Arsenale was a united space surrounded by a wall, a solid community of workers and goods.
Now it is divided into 4 parts. One part managed by the Italian Navy, another one by the City, a third by the Biennale of Venice, and a fourth is an industrial area (managing the Mose).
For decades VdC and all of us individually, with different casquet, tried to overlap the physical borders between the stakeholders and the city, and cross the walls around this area, linking within the separate parts.
We were somehow unsuccessful: the part remained not integrated among them, and the whole not integrated with the city.
We needed to change our traditional tools which were not effective enough. The meeting with our Lithuanian partner Laimikis, expert in urban games, opened a window on the future steps. And so we decided to propose the board game and the urban game, both about the Arsenale but with very different audiences.
In the E-activities the stakeholders surprisingly have been fascinated by our gaming proposal. The Biennale is organising already a treasure hunt for children, and now is willing to add our urban game devoted to adults, to be proposed in specific events. The Navy has a central office in Rome for special educational tools, and is interested to produce and distribute the board game.
This encouraging support was quite a surprise, because both are separate and distinct bodies, less surprising is the easy relation with the City office managing the North edge of the Arsenale, because of its vocation and connection on the side of citizen participation.
We found a positive partnership with one of the best italian board game designers, the Venetian studiogiochi, our first changemaker. They realized our prototype, very playfull and interesting. Unfortunately we discovered that board game has a new audience for us but not open enought to a wider audience. So we have done a step forward in another direction, with Marisa Convento, our second changemaker, who proposed an urban game for Venice, Arsenalia Argonauts all trought the Arsenale. We were able to test both games right at the beginning of the pandemic with a group of people, and we had a very good feed back from both groups.
The changed approach was useful to fertilise the context, and ourselves. But also was a jump in the unknown, and was made more difficult by the pandemia restrictions.
If we could begin the process once more from the beginning, by chance, with the experience in the field we didn't have at first, and without the COVID, we would have changed a few things.
First of all we would have engaged our partner Laimikis since the beginning, as consultant in the process, not as a changemaker as we thought at the time. Then we would engage local actors more able to follow us on the participatory process, because both somehow left us alone in relationship with the stakeholders and partnership.
Our E- event started from the necessity to use the Arsenale of Venice as a driver for the recreation of a sense of community of the whole city of Venice, threatened by the mass tourism, before, and now by the consequences of the pandemia. A city that suffers from a unique economic crisis as a consequence of the decline of tourism in a monofunctional city.
Now the Arsenale is used only for hosting events, the contrary of what it was, the cruddle of the trade and production of the Serenissima Republic.
Now it is an empty space, of great architectural value, so far a lost opportunity but it represents a great potential for the future of the city. The strongest lever for a positive change.
The Arsenale was a united space surrounded by a wall, a solid community of workers and goods.
Now it is divided into 4 parts. One part managed by the Italian Navy, another one by the City, a third by the Biennale of Venice, and a fourth is an industrial area (managing the Mose).
For decades VdC and all of us individually, with different casquet, tried to overlap the physical borders between the stakeholders and the city, and cross the walls around this area, linking within the separate parts.
We were somehow unsuccessful: the part remained not integrated among them, and the whole not integrated with the city.
We needed to change our traditional tools which were not effective enough. The meeting with our Lithuanian partner Laimikis, expert in urban games, opened a window on the future steps. And so we decided to propose the board game and the urban game, both about the Arsenale but with very different audiences.
In the E-activities the stakeholders surprisingly have been fascinated by our gaming proposal. The Biennale is organising already a treasure hunt for children, and now is willing to add our urban game devoted to adults, to be proposed in specific events. The Navy has a central office in Rome for special educational tools, and is interested to produce and distribute the board game.
This encouraging support was quite a surprise, because both are separate and distinct bodies, less surprising is the easy relation with the City office managing the North edge of the Arsenale, because of its vocation and connection on the side of citizen participation.
We found a positive partnership with one of the best italian board game designers, the Venetian studiogiochi, our first changemaker. They realized our prototype, very playful and interesting. Unfortunately we discovered that board games have a new audience for us but not open enough to a wider audience. So we have done a step forward in another direction, with Marisa Convento, our second changemaker, who proposed an urban game for Venice, Arsenalia Argonauts all through the Arsenale. We were able to test both games right at the beginning of the pandemic with a group of people, and we had very good feedback from both groups.
This educational inclusive and self-critical approach is successful in many directions, and we were able to enlarge our working group, raise the attention of our stakeholders and gather the interest of many people in our community.