A dramaturgy to imagine the future

As Lo Stato dei Luoghi, we feel the urgency today to desire something else. Amidst the cultural vacuity that surrounds us and the political crisis stifling democratic thought, we must re-examine the weary terminology of “regeneration” – increasingly a casualty of political rhetoric – and construct new visions for the future, centered on care and nourishment. We need to imagine – through a process fueled by collective thinking – new constellations capable not only of guiding our actions but also of engagin

g those who feel the urge to fill the voids left by the abandoned spaces we traverse. We also feel a profound urgency to stem the widening cracks within the public realm of our cities, towns, and territories – and, in doing so, to redefine the very meaning of “inhabiting” in its deepest social sense.
We articulate this desire through a five-act dramaturgy, expressed in twelve distinct voices: words in motion, intended to be enacted within the future relationships we seek to shape.

“When you have to face a project, think of it as organizing a party.”
Annibale D’Elia

 

I. POSTURE

 

1. ​​WE ARE NOT NEUTRAL SPACES. We operate within power dynamics, positioning ourselves in a territory means taking a stand.
We are spaces where diverse worlds meet and cross-pollinate. The cultural practices that nourish our spaces contribute to the creation of social, economic, symbolic, and political value within the territory – at times even becoming entangled, against our intentions, in processes of gentrification that remain beyond our control. We embrace conflict and complexity as realities; we engage with the territory we inhabit, questioning how we generate value and who benefits from it. We do not romanticize the community as an inherently cohesive space free from conflict, nor do we suppress dissent in the name of a false neutrality; instead, we take full responsibility for our choices.

2. CULTURE PLAYS NO ANCILLARY, COMPENSATORY, OR MERELY FUNCTIONAL ROLE. It is the primary essence and generator of every relationship, dialogue, and act of meaning-making.
It is not our role to fill institutional voids or serve as instruments for policies we do not endorse. We are not here to compensate for the decline of the public sector, the lack of services, or social inequalities; nor do we wish for our presence to justify a further retreat of public institutions. Instead, we seek to develop alternative, novel forms of collaboration and horizontal subsidiarity. We generate meaning, relationships, desires, imaginaries, critical capacity, change, and transformation; we cultivate rights, situated knowledge, and opportunities for both encounter and clash between differences; we build spaces open to appropriation and self-determination; and we prefigure new ways of inhabiting our territories.

 

II. PRINCIPLES

 

3. TO BE AN ACCESSIBLE SPACE MEANS INHABITING ITS THRESHOLD. Cultural accessibility is non-negotiable; it is an ongoing aspiration and a process of continuous learning.
Making a cultural practice accessible does not mean simplifying it or or smoothing out its edges to make it more easily palatable. It means removing barriers – economic, linguistic, physical, sensory, cognitive, symbolic, and cultural – without compromising complexity, research, or critical thinking. The public function of our spaces entails a responsibility to design physical environments that are safe, accessible, and welcoming to everyone. Questioning accessibility is the starting point for building spaces of expression that are porous and permeable – spaces capable of welcoming the “unexpected” individual, serving as a home for those seeking one outside their own domestic walls, and fostering connections rather than divisions. We conceive cultural accessibility as a political practice of listening and self-questioning, beginning within our own organizations—designing “with,” rather than “for,” those who have been excluded.

4. GENERATIVE IS WHAT TRANSFORMS AND REDISTRIBUTES. Value that does not return to the local area is not value: it’s appropriation.
A generative relationship is founded on an exchange in which the space, artists, citizens/communities, and the local area, all see their value grow. The terms of this exchange are defined collectively, and what is generated enhances the capacities, rights, and decision-making power of those who engage with the space. Conversely, when an exchange is unequal, the relationship becomes extractive: it consumes or exploits the material, social, and cultural resources of the local area, breaking the pact of trust upon which it was founded. For this reason, we reject the manipulation of culture to serve real estate speculation or any other form of territorial extraction – practices that, amidst an entrenched housing crisis, deny the broader right to housing.

5. ECOLOGY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT SOCIO-SPATIAL JUSTICE. Culture-led regeneration is an ecological way of inhabiting territories.
The practices we represent are committed to recognizing and caring for the intersectional relationships that bind human beings to their territories, to the resources within them, and to the manifold forms of non-human life that inhabit and co-produce these spaces. To be truly ecological, any practice must critically examine the relationships it activates—asking who has access to them, who is represented within them, who bears the costs, and how the practice might contribute to generating regenerative processes or, at the very least, minimizing negative impacts. An ecology devoid of social safeguards inevitably produces exclusion. By working within specific places—and starting from the practices that unfold there—we are tasked with fostering new relationships and opening up spaces of possibility, oriented toward a future that is more equitable, ecologically sensitive, and socially inclusive. Through ongoing practices of observation, listening, and engagement, we learn to understand the other life forms with which we share these places, to represent their interests in management decisions, and to translate the knowledge gained into principles of public responsibility.

6. BEAUTY IS A RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION. It is not mere ornamentation; it is a condition of dignity, desire, and aspiration.
Beauty is a condition that everyone should be able to access and help define. It is a condition of dignity, health, desire, and aspiration. The aesthetic dimension of existence engages our senses and fosters relationships; it is our gateway to the world and, consequently, a measure of that world’s accessibility. It cannot be a luxury reserved for a select few, nor a standard defined a priori. Beauty often takes shape within a process – emerging through the discovery and wonder that arise from our encounters and our inhabitating the places. The beauty of our cities and territories is not limited to architectural qualities or the physical appearance of spaces; rather, it prompts us to ask who has the right to enjoy them, who is excluded from them, and who bears the costs. When beauty for all is lost, the public city – and, indeed, all the geographies we inhabit – disappears along with it. Through cultural practices, creativity and the care and accessibility of our spaces, we assert the right to beauty.

 

III. PRACTICES

 

7. COMMUNITY-BASED CULTURAL WELFARE IS A FORM OF EMPOWERMENT. Cultural practices are generative; they provide the tools for care needed to subvert inequalities at their very source.
We work to establish a new role for cultural and artistic practices by connecting them with educational and welfare initiatives, and by fostering contemporary artistic production and research, with the goal of countering social inequality. We make spaces ‘appropriable’ – not merely accessible – and act as local antennae, connecting and integrating various policy sectors. We work through multidisciplinary teams and actively engage the most vulnerable members of the community. These practices create the conditions for communities and institutions to understand where needs arise – and to address or prevent them – by examining and intervening at the root of the relationships that generate these needs, render them invisible, or distribute them unequally. Cultural practices are, first and foremost, practices of care; they redefine and assert a new concept of public care – extending beyond the domestic or social-service spheres – through ethical, relational, and political lens. This manifests as the care of places, people, and local relationships; the care of territories and the diverse forms of life that inhabit them; and the care of collective memories and the processes of transformation that build new horizons of meaning. They embody a multidimensional form of care designed to respond to collective dynamics and problems of both social and ecological significance.

8. EVERY ACTION IS GROUNDED IN RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION. Everything we generate stems from a research process whose outcome cannot be predetermined.
Places are defined by how they are used. Their state is not a fixed condition but a process. They serve as zones of exchange that spark “communities yet to come”. The radical nature of the languages ​​employed, artistic inquiry, the careful stewardship of processes – along with the time required for listening, governance, navigating conflict, ecological maintenance, documentation, and pluralistic evaluation – are not peripheral activities: they are the very foundation of everything our spaces generate and share with the public. In addressing the challenge of long-term sustainability, we create spaces that seek to build alternative productive logics capable of supporting experimentation. We forge connections between the most radical poetics, innovative and transdisciplinary languages, communities, and audiences, innovative and transdisciplinary languages, communities, and audiences. We develop pathways for nurturing creative processes and foster permeability between informal spaces and structured environments – environments capable of hosting and supporting artistic production under dignified, professional conditions. Through artistic practice, we facilitate the emergence of new aspirations and the construction of new imaginaries.

 

IV. PERSPECTIVES

 

9. CULTURAL WORK REQUIRES RIGHTS AND DIGNIFIED MATERIAL CONDITIONS. Artistic processes constitute work and must be remunerated.
Everything we generate through our spaces – whether artistic, cultural, social, or environmental – is the result of processes requiring time, energy, and resources. Today, these processes rely primarily on low-paid labor, self-exploitation, and volunteerism – a taboo in our sector that we choose to name openly. We ask to be recognized and funded for what it is: work. We demand structural, programmatic public policies that support artistic research and experimentation – moving beyond the logic of sporadic grant calls and intermittent employment – and to acknowledge the labor and the value generated by these spaces.

10. HYBRID CULTURAL SPACES ARE INTERMEDIARY BODIES. They act as bridges connecting institutions and residents.
We serve as social and cultural infrastructures capable of inhabiting the threshold between local institutions, residents, and their territories. We are spaces that trigger processes of collective imagination – something that public policy desperately needs. Legitimation for our existing work is not enough; we call for support, resources, and a role in co-decision-making across cultural, social, urban, educational, health, and ecological policies, through structural and cross-cutting programs. An intermediary body excluded from decision-making is not an intermediary body at all; it is merely a service provider to which a public function has been outsourced. Draft legislation on urban regeneration continues to perpetuate a misleading narrative, based on a binary opposition between “degradation” and “rehabilitation.” In contrast, we argue for the necessity of investing in cultural spaces, recognizing them as laboratories for collective experimentation and as sites where processes of a “just transition” can take shape.

 

V. THE NETWORK

 

11. WE ARE A POLITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE. No space exists in isolation.
On our own, we are vulnerable to coercion; together, however, we form a mechanism for mutual support, advocacy, and the protection of cultural work. We exchange tools and knowledge, build alliances that extend beyond our sector, and engage with institutions through a collective voice. We are an ecosystem. The network is the political manifestation of our interdependence. Together, we resist the bureaucratic violence that increasingly hinders cultural work and jeopardizes our ability to keep our spaces open and vibrant; we also oppose policies of closure and repression that undermine experimentation and artistic freedom. We promote open spaces that actively work to counter ableism, racial and gender-based discrimination, narratives of hate and oppression, and all forms of violence – thereby safeguarding the creation of spaces for free expression.
The network acts as an interlocutor for policymakers and for public and private institutions at various levels of governance. Its goal is to steer local, national, and European policies toward the recognition and support of culture-led regeneration spaces – viewing them as essential social and cultural infrastructure at the local level, and as a new type of cultural institution.

12. WE ARE A BODY IN THE MAKING. Its substance relies on relationships: it exists because the places – and the people who inhabit them – exist.
We operate through a horizontal, synergistic, and rhizomatic approach, capable of weaving connections, fostering the growth of experiences, and nurturing shared practices, entirely free from competitive or individualistic dynamics. We cultivate mutualism, reciprocal support, generosity, and solidarity as the concrete foundation of our collective existence. We build alliances for intersectional struggles, rather than for narrow, interest-based agendas. As a network, we strive to serve as a platform for empowerment, care, and the creation of relationships – driven by a vision that affirms the role of culture as the bedrock of regeneration processes. This is an open, hybrid, anti-racist, decolonial, anti-fascist, and transfeminist practice, rooted in specific territories and operating beyond a purely productivist framework.