In early September 2021, between the 6th and the12th, the community of learners and teachers met in Milan for the second live workshop, designed and run by the action-research team Mapping San Siro. The workshop was set in the district of San Siro, one of the largest public housing estates in Milan where a large percentage of its population has a migratory background. Despite its physical proximity to the city centre, the area is generally perceived to be part of Milan’s periphery due to its challenging material and social conditions, ranging from intense intercultural and intergenerational conflicts to poor buildings maintenance.
At the same time, San Siro is also home to a vibrant network of individuals and organisations – known as Sansheros – who collaborate closely to support local residents and ameliorate living conditions in the neighbourhood. The work of Sansheroes ranges from research-based, policy-oriented initiatives, to the provision of day-to-day services such as legal counseling, language courses, and more. The workshop engaged with the reality of San Siro and its many stakeholders, addressing questions of diversity, cohabitation and care through collaborative storytelling, mapping and performances.
Learners were divided into four main groups and asked to conduct a short inquiry on four different topics: courtyards and neighbourhood life; commerce and economy; support network for migrants; public space and the street.
During the workshop, learners were supported in their work by the Research Wall, a tool that helps to create a visual representation of the state-of-the-art, take notes about the key findings of a given activity, and produce the first thoughts and reflections about the topics of the workshops. The wall was updated every day and its content was shared among the community of learners and teachers.
Every research group started its work by individuating some research questions and, from them, looked for some key findings and planned a performance to share the result of the inquiry. The first group, which focused on support networks for migrant people, raised a few research questions: Which are the relational dynamics behind accessing information and services within informal networks in migrant communities of San Siro? What can we learn as researchers from the needs that are covered by informal networks? What are the main tools that people use for accessing these services?
The key findings were numerous and valuable. First, the group noticed that hidden realities are hard to reach as an outsider, and it takes time to build trust; therefore, a shared language is relevant in the process of accessing information & services as well as in investigating this reality. Additionally, there is this huge role of passaparola (word of mouth) between the habitants of San Siro to access information and the services present in the district. Finally, who has more experience in the process of migration plays a critical role in a migrant community. The output of the group was a party/gathering in San Siro (‘Passaparola night’) where people shared food with locals and music and playful activities were set up.
The second group worked on courtyards and neighbour relations. Its research questions mainly focused on space appropriation and the relations between people and space. Learners asked themselves: How do inhabitants appropriate and negotiate space in the courtyard (through conflict)? How do inhabitants challenge the normative structure of the courtyard? How do courtyards fit in the established narrative? Is there room for alternative narratives? How can one transcend the established narrative?
The key findings were original and thought-provoking. Courtyards are hybrid spaces of negotiation where different realities coexist and where definitions of public and private space blur and overlap. Courtyards are also spaces caught in a conflict between planning and appropriation, where complexity and stratification of narratives can be found, but are spaces of hidden potentiality as well. The output of this work was a showcase of pictures taken into different courtyards (low- and high-income) paired with audio recordings of ambient sounds.
The third group addressed the issue of commercial spaces and work. Learners mainly focused on individual stories connecting the Can Siro district to other times and spaces. They analysed the ways in which people in San Siro make a living, how commerce and work in San Siro generate dialogue across places and people, and tried to identify some of the networks emerging from local commerce and work activities.
The members of the group thus learned that work trajectories and commercial activities in San Siro vary greatly; established business owners (from the neighborhood and elsewhere) coexist with people in extremely precarious work situations and everything in between. In addition, specific commercial and work activities and their associated individual narratives illustrate the complex network of relations and trajectories that converge in San Siro across scales. The output was a guided walk where the group told the stories of some inhabitants between precariousness, informality, and life projects.
The fourth group focused its attention on public spaces and the street. The research questions centred around different uses of the public space and the link between space, public intervention, and gendered and generation-based behaviours. What was the impact of paternalistic interventions in the public realm? What were the spatial practices of women and children in the public realm? What were the different perceptions of San Siro’s public realm?
The key findings helped to shed light on how San Siro’s public space is lived by locals. The interventions have led to certain social spatial practices moving into or out of the public realm; women socialising in public realm, for example, tend to be involved in looking after children and participating in informal trading (an example is the Roma community). The urban realm appears as divided by invisible boundaries defined by different groups of people. The result is a fragmentation of the urban space based on ethnic, gender, and age dimensions. The output was a guided walk/performance where the group made colleagues and inhabitants “play” with some temporary structures made of outgrowths (e.g., mirrors, chairs, etc.).
The Milan workshop was an intense experience where learners put themselves in the situation of investigating a reality that was new to them. The mixture of self-led activities, guided walks, talks and seminars provided the community of learners and teachers with new and fresh insights on the life of the district and opened up to potentially fruitful lines of research to be further developed!