Green Snowball Effect

BETWEEN MANTUA, BELLUNO AND VICENZA

GREEN SNOWBALL EFFECT – GENTLE ACTIVATION PATHS OF THE GREEN GENERATION

Mantua 19 January 2022 – For the cities of Mantua, Belluno and Vicenza, 2022 begins under the banner of a Green project conceived by the Segni d’infanzia association in partnership with Parco del Mincio, Atelier Teatro Danza e Rosso Teatro, Dedalofurioso and exvUoto Teatro, which has obtained the support of the Fondazione Cariverona within the framework of the Bando Format. The project, entitled “Green Snowball Effect”, envisages a year-long journey made up of performances and workshops in the territories of two regions, Lombardy and Veneto, with the aim of activating sustainable thoughts and actions in the new generations and making boys and girls, in turn, drivers within the community of ecological and environmentally friendly behaviour. Thanks to the involvement of scientific disseminators and professionals in the cultural sector, innovative formats are created together with opportunities for creative confrontation capable of transmitting, in an entertaining manner, knowledge, tools and social rituals of attention to the environment and capable of proposing an alliance between different generations. What is the ultimate goal? To create a real green wave, generating the so-called ‘avalanche effect’ that spreads from the youngest to involve and raise awareness on green issues, through cultural actions and also with the help of digital tools, more and more people, more communities, more territories.

Territories, activities and the role of TEEN. Segni d’infanzia has created a virtuous network connecting Mantua and Belluno, cities hosting two important children’s theatre festivals – SEGNI New Generations Festival (seventeen years old in 2022) and the younger Belluno Kids Festival, born in 2019 – that promote and activate the green wave moved by the new generations. This process also passes through Vicenza thanks to the involvement of Dedalofurioso and exvUoto Teatro, which participates in the two festivals by activating environmental awareness and carrying out an emotional mapping of the territories in relation to environmental sustainability behaviour through a series of workshops with the various local communities. exvUoto will also be involved in the theatrical review “Il giardino di Alice” (Alice’s Garden), which takes place in the summer in the Vicenza area.

Thanks to the “Green Snowball Effect” in Mantua and Belluno, the Ciclofficina workshops (September – October 2022) will be activated for the creation of a large ecological bicycle parade – in collaboration with FIAB – that will cross the streets of the two cities, inaugurating the European week of sustainable mobility; special ecological content is planned for both the two SEGNI NEW GENERATIONS FESTIVAL events in Mantua and the Belluno Kids festival, as well as for Nabuzardan, the historic Carnival of Art, which this year, in compliance with the pandemic situation, is postponed to the beginning of April and ‘masquerades’ as a spring festival, a real invitation to enjoy the reawakening of nature with an ‘ecological’ event.

Throughout the year there will also be a series of workshops to activate environmental awareness with the involvement of a group of Mantuan adolescents, the TEENs, who in a peer-to-peer mode dialogue, under the guidance of experts, with the younger ones, as older siblings to be taken as role models. Inspiring this mode and the very idea of the project was the book ‘We’re watching you. The sustainable future explained well’, which sees 13-year-old Potito Ruggiero and author and journalist Federico Taddia in dialogue. The project, supported by the municipal administrations, stems from the awareness that in order to seal this pact, it is necessary to prepare a shared ground, bringing into play clear, simple and direct messages, giving the green generation tools and skills to acquire a greater awareness of the scientific basis, so as to counteract the boomerang effect generated by fake news and foster the development of empathy. One of the main objectives is to train young adolescents as green ambassadors by also providing them with specific digital content that can be accessed online at segninonda.org.

The partners. Segni d’infanzia, a Mantua-based association that has been active for years in environmental educational projects often integrated into the SEGNI festival, which it has been organising for seventeen years, decided to respond to the Cariverona Foundation’s call for proposals and did so by benefiting from the experience and relations cultivated over the years with various organisations both locally and nationally. It involved the Mincio Park, a long-standing partner of the SEGNI festival, in the project, which deals with the protection of biodiversity, environmental enhancement and redevelopment, the creation of infrastructure for cycle tourism, and the valorisation of the territory also through ecotourism and environmental education. While outside the region, there is the Belluno festival directed by Atelier Teatro Danza, called Belluno Kids Festival, which offers an ‘extra-ordinary’ space to recreate moments in which adults and children can meet, transforming spaces through artistic events to make people experience the city with different eyes. And again in Vicenza, Dedalofurioso with the members of exvUoto Teatro, a company founded by Andrea Dellai and Tommaso Franchin in 2012, which in recent years has conceived and experimented with the format of the emotional mapping of a territory, a theatrical project of urban regeneration that develops through dialogue with places and their inhabitants. On the occasion of the project, the artists will create a mapping that allows the cities involved to be re-read according to the criteria of environmental sustainability.

Who can participate. The project is therefore aimed at schools, families, teenagers and citizens of Mantua, Belluno and Vicenza.

How can you participate? Schools can write to ufficioscuole@segnidinfanzia.org to activate the free workshops.

New TEENs can join the team and the public and families can participate in events throughout the year by registering for individual activities (for information and registration see the newsletters of the various partners and on segnidinfanzia.org).

Lots of digital content can also be discovered on the free platform segninonda.org in a schedule dedicated to the project.

Watch the press conference on segninonda.org