FuoriTema: when the school becomes a space for dreams and participation

Feb 21, 2025News

Can an educating community transform the future of a neighborhood?

In Palermo’s Kalsa and Sant’Erasmo neighborhoods, something singular is happening: urban regeneration and social innovation are taking shape through the creation of community cultural spaces. Here, parents, bambinɜ, teachers and associations are collaborating to bring to life new educational practices and to rethink public space as a place for collective growth.

FuoriTema wants to expand and strengthen this process, involving new actors and experimenting with a participatory governance model. But how do we build an educating community capable of truly impacting the territory?

A first step, like the one taking place in Kalsa, is the collection of needs from below, which in this specific case will serve to make the school a space that responds more and more to children’s desires.

The project has brought within the Rita Borsellino school, in the heart of the Kalsa neighborhood, creative workshops with the dual objective of developing minors’ noncognitive skills and giving shape and space to their desires. The activities implemented are themselves the result of a co-design process developed within the educating community-which includes school, parents and third sector entities-and based on the belief that only shared interventions can have authentic value and real impact. The ideas gathered will not remain just on paper: the school and the educating community will engage in translating desires into concrete actions, evaluating new activities and spaces that meet the needs that have emerged.

Through participatory storytelling, modeled from time to time on the needs and ages of the classes, the children discovered Tanabata, the traditional Japanese festival known as the Festival of Stars in Love. This encounter with a distant culture became a bridge between worlds, offering the youngest children an experience in which imagination and discovery intertwine, expanding their view of the world.

The party created a free and welcoming space where wishes could emerge without forcing them. Through games, questions, and immersive activities, the story came to life along with the listener, transforming the tale into a shared and dynamic experience. Only at the end, after exploring the meaning of the festival and experiencing the storytelling firsthand, were the children invited to repeat the Tanabata ritual: entrusting their wishes to the strips of paper, tanzaku, just as it happens in Japan. There were those who expressed a personal dream and those who imagined a different school, richer in activities and spaces tailored to them. All the tanzaku were then hung on the Wish Tree, which became a large binder of dreams and ideas that emerged in the classes.

Each tanzaku was carefully preserved because an important voice resonates in each one. The collected wishes will not remain mere words: they will be the starting point for a participatory analysis, guiding the co-design process and helping the educating community map out the next actions and directions to take.

For more information contact Riccardo Bellavista: riccardo.bellavista@danilodolci.org.

FuoriTema is a project funded by Con i bambini. The project aims to expand the process of urban regeneration and social innovation already underway in the Kalsa-Sant’Erasmo neighborhoods of Palermo, fostering the growth of an educating community centered on public space, the fight against inequality and mutualism. The initiative aims to test a horizontal organizational model, strengthening the dialogue between schools, public agencies and the third sector, with interventions aimed at developing the skills of children, teachers and parents and creating new educational spaces.

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