What will you produce?
City4Care is a project to build a diffused community of care within The Third Paradise Quarters, in suburban Lecco. These are five historical neighbourhoods of Lecco, lying on the slopes of Monte Resegone (almost all linked to Manzonian memories, starting from Acquate, about 200 metres from the Bravi’s climbing road and not far from Lucia’s house), and home to about 10.000 people (about 6.000 family units, with 2.000 children and 1500 over 55s) and about 100 businesses, in addition to important public institutions and structures.
City4Care was presented as a candidate for a social grant in October 2019, obtaining second place with a very high score after the assessment by the Swiss and Italian committees. C4C follows another Interreg Europe project, winner of the 2018 edition and running till the end of 2021: BRAINART, which deals with Alzheimer’s disease, senile dementia, the eradication of the social stigma and the preservation of the quality of life through art and technological research (among the partners are the Museum Vincenzo Vela in Mendrisio and the elderly department of Canton Ticino).
C4C anticipated in its text what it’s said today about the creation of a new territorial medicine, also relying on general medical practitioners, who in Lombardy have been forgotten for the past twenty years due to the implementation of a socio-sanitary politics favouring private individuals and the centralisation in hospitals.
Here are some of the key concepts of C4C: prevention through the engagement and the activation of the whole community for its care, people who have received care or are at risk preparing to look after the caregivers (for them to recuperate from the burnout), the themes of art, food, meditation, the generational encounter between elderlies and children, the curative approach to dementias by providing the caregivers with a support network, the eradication of the social stigma through art, clinical research and technology, holistic medicine with philosophy and meditation as self-care contributing to an active aging beneficial to the community; all this through the development of the Third Paradise paths as horizons of care in urban woods and cities.
The most important (and financially demanding) of the planned projects is the conversion of a centre of artistic production, our headquarters in fact, CRAMS, which in the mornings will turn into a rehabilitation centre for 50 patients suffering from the consequences of a stroke or from Parkinson’s disease. This project will be coordinated by a group of neuroscientists, musician artists and doctors (Rossana Becarelli is already a member of our medical-scientific committee) with the department of neurosciences of Lecco’s hospital, the biggest in the province and among the major ones in Lombardy.
The project will last 24 months and end in July 2022: by that date material and immaterial events and infrastructures will have been built in the four square kilometres of The Third Paradise Quarters, all closely connected to the themes of care with a vision that now also contemplates specific post-Covid-19 topics.
For example, six milongas will be set up in the five neighbourhoods (in retired people clubs and assisted living structures) to give life to Tango City, a festival on dance-care: this event will be accompanied by others, among which is Drum City (actively involving over a thousand children from the neighbourhoods’ schools), organised with the elderly from retired people clubs, which we intend to turn into creative hubs where new generations and retired artisans can exchange knowledge for the benefit of the community.
We are already working on our summer activities with our partners and Monza Brianza Lecco’s local health service (the other Italian partners are Pavia’s hospital and university), and – in collaboration with New York’s Third Paradise embassy coordinated by Monika Wuhrer – by 2022 we will create I KoKo Camp Lecco in association with KoKo NYC (Kokonyc.org, a project by Monika and Kate’s Open Source Gallery).
Together with the local health service’s walking groups for cardiopaths, we will trace three Third Paradise paths, in cities and in urban woods, trying to connect them to the Italian network, starting from those in Marche opened by the Rebirth ambassador Stefano Treggiari.
In regard to the themes of art, food, sustainability and solidarity, we’ll continue with the series of events Coltiviamo la Città (Let’s farm the city), for a new alliance between food and territory (dedicated to Gino Veronelli), in which food (cure for the soul and aggregating element for the community) will be framed by the ancient courtyards of the neighbourhoods and seen from a dance therapeutic point of view.
We are hoping to soon be able (by the end of July) to make available to all the Rebirth ambassadors and embassies that might be interested the material of the project, and information and updates on the activities of the association, which extends to Switzerland with the city of Mendrisio, a social housing institution and a public structure for the elderly.
C4C will also feature a yearly festival dedicated to the Art of Health from 2020 to 2022, following the edition held in October 2019.
Monza’s local health service, among the ones in Lombardy least affected by the Covid-19 disaster, is strongly engaged, and this will surely lead to interesting experimentations. The fact that we are the proponents and that the background is the one of The Third Paradise Quarters is proof that the practical translation of what Michelangelo helped build here in Lecco gives us the great responsibility to really try to orient a whole territory towards change.
There are numerous videos available documenting the activities in progress conducted by all of us from Lecco, Milan and Turin (including Rossana Becarelli) working on Brainart, the first European project on art and health, which we have been running since the end of 2018.
http://brainart.crysalis.it/health/tavolo-interattivo-brainart-la-presentazione/.
Contacts and references:
http://www.soundbeam.it/
