ZUP! Zuppa urban project

ZUP The recipe for chance

Participation and strategic innovation

Promoters
Noemi Satta Cultura Territorio Identità

Partners
Politecnico Imagislab e design interni; Consiglio di zona 9; Food in the streets; Ecocourts; Cap20100; Falacosagiusta; Kuminda; Cascina Cuccagna; ImpactHUB Milano.

Keywords
urban regeneration | participatory process | social innovation | community | strategy

Website
progettozuppa

Context
ZUP starts in 2010/11 in Dergano/Bovisa area.
Dergano is a neighbourhood in the north part of Milano, with more than 20.000 inhabitants, mostly Italians, but immigrants residents are in a higher percentage then the Milan average. There’s a mix of single, young students, families with children, old people, retired and still working, clerk, a good average of commercial and entrepreneurial activities, with a residual component of traditional artisans, and, a little but strong percentage of designer and creative.
In the last 2 centuries this area was an industrial district: nowadays most part of the old factories are destroyed, inexistent or reused. Many chimneys stack remain and remember us the kind of life that people lived here: it’s still possible to meet at the bar or in the shops old working class men and listen to their history and recent memory of the old times. The neighbourhood is also defined by many formal and informal green spaces. Some of them are urban gardens, with playgrounds, basketball or roller skate areas; others are simply spaces not yet used after the closing of some old factories: among those some are green and almost wild and it is possible to define them as “third landscapes” (Gilles Clement)
There is not only a botanical “third landscape”, but also a sort of a cultural third landscape. This environment is made of many little, often informal and not institutional activities or groups of people, that contribute on building a new cultural production and fertilization. Here we started ZUP Zuppa urban project, playing with the mixture of elements of this area, very common to the Milanese neighbourhoods, trying to put together all the different communities, intended not defined by ethnicity but by cultural practices (Bourdieu).

Concept
“Talk like you eat” literally translates an Italian idiomatic sentence meaning an invitation to express oneself in plain language, paying attention to the person listening to you.
Much similar, a soup is quite simple, easy, and sustainable, and in the same time made out of different ingredients.
Like a soup, ZUP intend to make inclusive simple and easy a participative project, really involving, with a community (or a part of it) really engaged.

Strategy
The main characteristic of a participative project is an inclusive approach aimed to truly engage people in collaboration. For this purpose an active and self-conscious community is needed; a community that participates in all the phases of the process: from analysis to co-design, from project planning to managing the whole sequence of actions.
The main questions we need to address are the following: how to engage a truly participative collaboration between researchers, mediators, political decision makers and residents? How to avoid stereotypes? How to avoid fatalistic attitudes? How to activate a community as a decision maker with a social responsibility? How to empower the community in order to let it build its own action plan?
Zup developed and purposes its own methodological approach in order to activate a participative community and in order to follow the whole process.
The main methods used in the ZUP approach are borrowed from:
– Participatory Learning Action methodology and techniques
– Territorial and cultural marketing approach and strategies
– Public and relational art project approach and strategies
The PLA methodology, as Chambers explains (Chambers 1997) orients the participatory practice towards self awareness and on deconstructing the representations of the main issues according to the context. Moreover, the PLA methodology empowers people to revers the main opinions and the stereotypes, in order to provoke a change. In this way poor or marginalized communities are enabled to gain their own voice and they are encouraged to build by themselves analysis, plans, actions. Of course in this methodology, it’s preferable not to have expert of some technical issues, but facilitators, often also taken from the local community itself. Following the same approach, ZUP proposed a set of instruments in order to define the main stereothipes emerging from a given context and to turn them upside down. It is important to be aware of one’s own thoughts and representations, that will help consolidate a common vision. At the same time ZUP invites participants to search for new visions, surprising, unexpected, to be open minded and creative. The aim is the same: let the community decide on how to act and build its own future transformations.
Another model that inspired that ZUP methodology in the first study of the context, territorial or thematic, is cultural marketing and in particular the analysis techniques.
In its applications on touristic or territorial or even better in cultural sectors, several techniques have been developed and tested. The first phase of every marketing plan is dedicated to the understanding and interpretation of a place or an institution. It is needed to comprehend the identities of a place, the main resources, material and not, the nodes and the ties already present or potentially working. Following a decade of experiences in the strategic field, ZUP gives a special attention to the mapping of resources, networks and cultural identities. This actioni is a mix of field and desk research (with influence from semiotic studies and its analytic tools, already applied in advertisement and in urban ethnography too) and generate several maps . An interpretative map, a cultural map and a geo-referenced map with the main points of interest (material or not).
Although ZUP has a very strong methodological basis, it has also inspirations from public art projects. It is related to the specific branch of public art called relational or participative art. In particular ZUP takes inspiration from all those relational projects that are capable to enforce the emotional ties between place and community. An important part of this art takes origin from situationist international practice of wandering (trying to reach the purpose along the journey while walking) or detournement.
ZUP aims to generate a change, playing with the same lightness, and takes suggestions from many experiences in this field, in order to build simple, material outcomes that summarize all the process. These objects are soup recipes or soup plates, nothing emphatic but easy to recognise objects, that are capable to transfer meaning from one person to another. The metaphor of soup, in this case gains two meanings: the recipe as a collection of ingredients and the act of sharing the same meal. All around a simple soup we can share vision, reverse sterothipes, search new scenarios, try to involve new people in the process, act a transformation. And at the end of this work we are pleasantly satisfied and with new ideas. The perceptions gained required during the journey became part of the recipe, and the recipe itself tells a story of the walk.

Activities
ZUP is a method that consists out of a series of experimental, co-projected laboratories These accompany processes of transformation: from the first ideas to the practical realisation. ZUP is a method developed to approach complex situations – like strategic changes or urban regeneration – from a simple point of view. It uses self-developed, innovative methods, which have been tested over time. ZUP approaches the clients’ questions by creating a laboratory for innovation: its method is a customized kitchen with high-quality utensils made available to the participants.

Development
ZUP – Zuppa Urban Project was created in 2010 to valorize the Dergano/ Bovisa area in Milano (Italy).
From there ZUP was exported to other areas of the city and over the country. One of the first clients was The HUB Milano, part of a worldwide network of collaborative workspaces. During its short life, ZUP did not only cross the territorial borders but also those of sectors and markets; from bottom-up territorial regeneration to innovative ideas for the internal structure of organizations and businesses towards the direction of strategic social innovation. The method has proven to be very flexible, adaptable to different audiences (either social or professional communities) and has the ability to tackle different themes.
From ZUP Zuppa Urban Projects was developed ZUP the recipe for change, as a format of services that help to construct – in a collaborative way – scenarios and plans on middle and long term bases. It is a format that encourages involvement in change, while having fun; it is a way to imagine transformation.

Results
ZUP nasce nel 2011 per sperimentare nel quartiere Dergano/Bovisa (Milano) un processo lungo, coinvolgente, aggregante, multidisciplinare e multisettoriale. È un progetto che non si incasella facilmente nel settore cultura, o in quello dei giardini, del commercio, o del sociale: di fatto ha una valenza forte di attivatore di energie, nelle sue diverse attività sviluppate nel quartiere.
Alcuni dati per dare una dimensione dell’impatto.
Periodo 2011, 12 volontari per la ZUPfest, 15 realtà tra istituzioni, associazioni, esercizi commerciali, 150 partecipanti nel quartiere: non solo convivialità, ma ricerca, riconoscimento e riappropriazione dello spazio pubblico attraverso la cucina e la creatività, attivazione di reti, attivazione di idee e di gruppi che le portino avanti. Oltre 15.000 nei social network, circa 500.000 lettori su stampa nazionale. Il valore delle attività svolte nel 2011 (ZUPfest, ZUPranzo, ZUPlab) è di circa 30.000€, coperti da investimenti, elargizioni liberali, volontariato, sponsorship tecniche e dalla rete di f-autori culturali, commerciali e istituzionali. Sono numeri non eclatanti di per sé ma significativi rispetto a un quartiere e ad alcuni soggetti, come i commercianti o i ristoratori, difficili da coinvolgere: questi ultimi hanno appositamente aperto di sabato per realizzare la maratona di zuppe della ZUPfest. Ancora un altro dato: nel piccolo Giardino Carnevali nel marzo 2012 inizia tutto il lavoro con un concerto di percussionisti. Circa 150 persone scendono dai palazzi, stupiti, sconvolti, curiosi, perplessi. È il non pubblico di questo genere di eventi, che nel quartiere normalmente richiama un target medio –alto, colto, progressista. L’obiettivo è di avere anche il non pubblico in questo genere di processi.
Periodo 11/2012-11/2013: 8 eventi della partecipazione; organizzazione e segreteria; coordinamento rete volontari. Le persone coinvolte sono state circa 600, con una buona comunicazione sui social e su stampa tradizionale (1.500 social a 600.000 stampa) e un primo allargamento della rete degli interessati. I primi effetti sono stati i seguenti: 10 volontari attivi; 4 negozianti intorno al giardino partecipi e coadiuvanti il processo (che si sommano ai 15 precedentemente attivati e partner tecnici della prima fase di ZUP2011), accompagnamento del CDZ 9, rete commercianti di via Tartini ulteriormente coinvolta e informata, network con associazioni e comitati dello stesso e di altri quartieri. L’obiettivo non è di mettere sotto tutela lo spazio e le persone, ma di generare possibilità di alimentare progressivamente l’interesse, la partecipazione, le soluzioni di trasformazioni.
Autunno 2013 In un giardino: Collaborazione tra ZUP, Politecnico di Milano, associazione de.de.p e CdZ9; 4 mesi ,
80 studenti e cittadini coinvolti, 400 persone presenti, tre momenti pubblici di incontro e lavoro, un laboratorio con il metodo ZUP per creare ricette di quartiere, 8 spazi e progetti di trasformazione (a cura di design degli interni, lab.APE), 8 webserie e lancio della social tv su fb (a cura di desgin della comunicazione, lab fuoricampo)

In questo momento il gruppo di 10 volontari fissi e il network ha già generato nuove attività e presto avrà un’immagine autonoma da ZUP (studio del brand e dell’immagine coordinata del Giardino Carnevali in corso) in un percorso verso l’autonomia che si ritiene importante come effetto positivo del lavoro di ZUP. Nella media e lunga durata sarà importante lavorare sull’autonomia economica di un processo di cura e di gestione degli spazi verdi, tale da generare entrate per persone svantaggiate.

In sintesi quindi la misurabilità e il monitoraggio è data sia dai numeri che ZUP produce, sia dai target che riesce a coinvolgere, e sulla continuità del coinvolgimento. I numeri descrivono l’effetto immediato, ma sono da ricollegare nel medio termine con l’esigenza di prendere cura delle visioni di cambiamento e dei nodi critici del territorio. La ricaduta (l’impatto) è avere gruppi di persone consapevoli e capaci di portare avanti il processo con continuità.

Dissemination
Canale Vimeo di Noemi Satta
Blog www.progettozuppa.com
Pagina Facebook
Picture card
Cartella di fotografie
ricettario e ricettari diversi ZUPlab
zupkids card

Tools

Type of tool: Picture cards | Info graphics | Video and photography | Podcasts

Function: Analysis, brain storming, engagement | Information, documentation | Documentation and engagement | Documentation and engagement

Origin: Zup (internal) production | Internal with collaboration | Collaboration between Zup and imagis lab internal production

Target/audience: citizens, workshop participants, ngo, neighborhood