Shaping – together – a more equitable and just future, overcoming educational, cultural and socioeconomic boundaries and encouraging culture, inclusion and social innovation through workshops, talks, workshops and shows for the whole family. This is the goal of first edition of CultureLink, the Festival organized by the social enterprise Stripes on the occasion of its thirty-fifth birthdaytogether with the magazine Pedagogika.it and with the patronage of the Municipality of Milan and the Municipality of Rho, which will be held from 4 to 6 October at MIND – Milano Innovation District in Milan.
The theme chosen for 2024, “Beyond the Threshold”is an invitation to overcome the boundaries that hinder us in our professions or relationships, the complete program of the three days dedicated to education, training, culture and social innovation is online. After the inaugural day on Friday 4 October, which will see, among other events, a conference on the value of proximity and the generation of social capital, empowerment, participation and well-being and a debate on the opportunities offered to companies that choose to adopt strategies sustainable from an organisational, social and environmental point of view, the MIND will be the scene of numerous laboratories, workshops and shows for boys and girls, young people and families.
The event is aimed at teachers, educators and social workers, the first appointment scheduled for the morning of Saturday 5 October: “Vivi Sustainability”, an opportunity to learn about good sustainability education practices through a fun card game. Still on the subject of sustainability, the “Eco-Coding” laboratory will involve children and young people aged 8 to 14 in an interactive and practical wayhighlighting the environmental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and intensive agriculture and livestock farming techniques with the support of the mBot robot and block programming via mBlock. The Biobab nursery, the children’s service managed by the Stripes Cooperative in the Milan-Bollate prison, will open its doors offering boys and girls up to 6 years of age a series of activities aimed at discovering the potential of the body , of light and exploration between different worlds. The “Suspended Colors” and “Reflected Colors” initiatives will aim in a fun way respectively at the exploration of vertical painting and primary colors and at the knowledge of the relationship between light and shadows, while “Giochi di luce” is the name of the initiative with which boys and girls will be able to learn to represent new possible selves by exploiting the combined potential of natural and digital language.
In the end, “Minimondi” will represent the opportunity to come into contact with new materials and practice different social skills by immersing yourself in different, curious and creative worlds. The Saturday workshop proposal also aims to strengthen relational skills and digital skills: “Tour around the world” will guide participants aged between 6 and 10 on a journey across the five continents in which to develop language skills in a group , manuals and cooperation; “Let’s play with the body and with coding”, part of the experimental project “Stringhe – small numbers in movement” is aimed at children aged between 7 and 8 and their parents and involves the experimentation of integrated activities of physical and digital education. Among the new frontiers to be explored, there will be artificial intelligence to support educational robotics. In “Learn artificial intelligence with Thymio”, children over the age of 10 will learn to program the Thymio robot in a practical and creative way to make it autonomous and responsive in responding to new challenges.
On the morning of Sunday 6 October, the third and last day of the Festival, the offer for boys and girls up to 13 years of age will consist of three experiential and fun workshops. Starting from the real exclusion of Pluto from the planets of the solar system, the “I love Pluto” workshop is an animated reading of the book “Pluto has left the group” by Francesca Tenchini which aims to build a model of behavior in which no one is the victim of exclusions, discrimination and marginalization. Following this, “Suona la scintilla”, curated by Bambini Bicocca, will involve children aged between 4 and 8 in two shifts in a multisensory and hybrid conversation between music and science. Stands will also be installed where you can participate in rotation in various creative and digital workshops designed to stimulate the imagination and creativity of young explorers by taking advantage of practical manipulation, robotics, painting and storytelling.
Furthermore, on Saturday and Sunday, those who will take part in the workshops you will be able to attend three shows for free, designed to satisfy the tastes of the whole family. The first, “Stripes Gump – 35 years of Stripes”, curated by Alessia Amboni and Rosa Alba Bellante and created by Stripes members and members, will be an opportunity to get to know the history and commitment of the cooperative in these first 35 years of activity.
On Sunday morning, The Great Company of the Magician Barnaba will underline the importance of imagination, capable of acting just like a magical power, in the context of an interactive show created with the help of the public. Finally, Digital Bloom, part of the MIND complex, will host “Senza rete”, a show by and with Chiara Cozzi and Gaia Gazza aimed at children in nursery and primary school: an opportunity to reflect on the theme of connection and dependence on digital devices which increasingly hinder us from rediscovering the beauty of life.
