from MATERA
Hey guys, CIAO!
I think I am the only one of the Edgeryders Community that actually lives in Matera. I moved here 3 months ago (from Milan) because i can see many opportunities. The town is small, all the people are very well and easily connected, and it’s a perfect place where to experiment, because is almost a vergin territory.
The town is composed of two parts: one ancient (i Sassi) and one modern (built from the 50ties). There is a big gap between the 2 parts, grown even faster after the decision of include Matera ancient part into the UNESCO list.
People in general are not really proud of their town and the sense of trust between people and politics is very weak.
Students are pushed by their family to go away and study out of the region and most of the time they never come back.
There is a quite good and strong cultural scene but it’s made of very individual groups and they don’t create networks or collaborative way of exploring new possibilities.
There are some local communities( farmers, couchsurfer…)quite active.
All these aspects (they are just some of a bigger number) may sound crazy but for me they represent a unique opportunity and not a problem.
What you have talked about so far, the Unmonastery or whatever name we want to give it is a great thing to bring it here in Matera.
The project need to be characterized by an informal space in a urban/rural setting. Matera has this unique opportunity to be a town where the rural aspect is still really strong. There are some modern suburb still very rural, with big communal area, public gardens that we could transfrom in urban vegetable gardens and through them build up strong sense of community and inpsire feeling of commitment and trust.
It can have a very strong potential, because it can provide a tool by which improve the social conditions of the communities in particular the ones that have been abandoned, with the ambition to make a real social innovation: on the one hand supporting the development through local businesses, the other pushing the creation of new business through a transfer of skills and examples of production based only on the exploitation of local resources.
People that will partecipate to the new community will be able to create/inspire/trasfer projects intercepting the typical problems of urban and rural underdevelopment that prevent any local economic businesses and agents to be connected, informed and integrated in a reference network, capable of supporting the needs.
The project will give the chance of building national and international networks in order to learn about innovative experiences, experiment advanced partnerships and accelerate the design and implementation of concrete solutions.
Working on a real territory will trasform it in a experimental stage.
The project can take in consideration the issues of:
(a) the redevelopment of some specific urban areas,
(b) the provision of basic infrastructure to fill the digital divide,
(c) the development of a reference platform in order to get available resources and tools online (mapping local economy as u said already)
(d) the improvement of the economic performance of typical local products and resources
I think Matera (in the Basilicata region) can be the first reference prototype, and then it would be replicated in other regions with similar situations in an international context.
I think that that we have already lost hundreds of billions of euros in terms of wasted opportunity, bacause of the absence of real services to meet the need expressed by most of the areas with problems of underdevelopment and economic backwardness.
This project can have a strong social impact about:
- inspiring disadvantaged categories of customers, such as young people in trouble, creatives and freelance people unemployed
- automatically relevant social consequences to the local community
- this links can generates new jobs in a high unemployment rate context
- it promotes the development of know-how and expertise
- the use of environmentally friendly technologies
- products and production processes are clean-technologies
I like the idea of having a minimun duration of 1 month and maximun of 6 months.
Please feel free to answer, make questions, ask more details about Matera and I will try (not sure) to answer!
--I have already started a small project call CASA Netural in the core of the Sassi area. Actually It's my house, but i let the wifi open and I invite people to work together in the space. Still weak partecipation but these things need time and care. Take a look at this !
