Il Giardino di Torricola - Green Urban Spaces for people and nature
A green urban space where it is possible to cultivate a personal and profound contact with Nature and people and re-establish direct contact with them.
In the garden people can find vegetable gardens, cultural and musical events, events related to local traditions, outdoor educational paths with children, self-construction workshops, sustainable agriculture workshops and collaborations with local actors.
Everything is co-produced with local communities...because together is better!
Local
Italy
Metropolitan City of Rome
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-12-31
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Il Giardino di Torricola APS Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Fausto Last name of representative: D'Angelo Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: President of the organization Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Amedeo Momo Simonetti, snc Town: Rome Postal code: 00178 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 334 860 4949 E-mail:ilgiardinoditorricola@gmail.com Website:https://www.ilgiardinoditorricola.com/
The 'il Giardino di Torricola' (The Torricola Garden) project was born in Rome, in 2016, from the intuition of a few young people to take over an agricultural space - located in the Appia Antica Park in Rome - that had been abandoned for several years. In 2019, the social promotion association was founded and today has 2512 members.
The founding conviction of the project process is that urban regeneration must also pass through the valorization of the numerous green spaces that characterize the peculiar and extraordinary morphology of the city. Thus, actively collaborating with the citizens and institutions of reference and advancing ideas and solutions that can be practically implemented by the citizens.
The Garden has therefore been proposed as a model born from below.
The idea of valorization pursued has spontaneously led to the participatory creation of a place of gathering where it is possible to cultivate a personal and profound contact with Nature and people and re-establish direct contact with them.
A place that facilitates knowledge between people and inclusiveness in all its forms; a place that provides opportunities for learning and training to allow each user to follow the path of autonomy and thus the replicability of the good practices proposed.
Being together "by doing", in a sustainable way and promoting participation and culture, the project, have triggered a widespread sense of enthusiasm and a series of fruitful territorial collaborations, institutional and otherwise, which have led the abandoned space to become the shared and participatory place it is today.
In practice, we promote different types of activities related to the concepts of environmental and social sustainability: shared vegetable gardens, a shared henhouse and apiary, cultural and musical events, events related to local traditions, outdoor educational paths with children, self-construction workshops, sustainable agriculture workshops and collaborations with local actors.
Community
Beauty
Sustainability
Multifunctionality
Intergenerationality
The project pursues sustainability objectives linked to both environmental and social and economic dimensions.
In terms of environmental sustainability, the main objectives refer to raising citizens' awareness of the issue and the recovery of a disused space with a view to the circular economy of urban structures.
In terms of objectives related to environmental awareness, various initiatives of different natures have been organised over the years: shared vegetable gardens to reconnect people with the production chain of the food they eat, participatory green building courses to convey the importance of sustainable architecture for nature and people, self-building courses aimed at providing the basic skills to build everyday objects with waste materials and thus reduce the environmental impact related to their construction and use the use of short supply chain foods from sustainable production processes and, finally, activities with children to convey, from an early age, the importance of living in contact with and respecting nature.
On the other hand, the recovery of an abandoned land within an urban context intends to convey the importance of re-valorising the existing as a device for saving resources and generating social, cultural and environmental value for the cities in which we live, starting from what already exists.
From a social point of view, the project intends to reinforce the dimensions of social inclusion and cohesion, favouring moments of sociability linked to the environment, culture and being together in harmony and serenity in a natural setting that allows one to come into close contact with the environment while remaining in the city.
Finally, from an economic point of view, the project pursues objectives of self-sufficiency and is able to generate revenues capable of covering costs and thus make the project capable of sustaining itself in the long term.
The objective that the Torricola Garden project has set for itself in terms of beauty and experience for the people who use the space, is linked to the conviction that pursuing one's own idea of beauty, is inextricably linked to the concept of the individual and therefore collective well-being.
Taking care of a centuries-old garden has proved to be a great opportunity to pursue a sense of beauty through the techniques of 'Garden Design', the management of greenery, the care of human relationships, and the realization of artistic or artisanal installations with functional and aesthetic purposes.
We believe that the care of each person in every detail or area can be transmitted and can thus contribute to a feeling of peace and cosiness, which is especially useful for maintaining sound psycho-physical health in the urban and peri-urban context.
In line with what has already been realized, for example, on 24th -25th -26th March 2023 the Torricola Garden will host a course on self-construction with the Mediterranean reed or Arundo Donax led by the international collective 'Canya Viva'. The aim of the course is the participative realization of a Curved Art Installation using exclusively this indigenous material - considered to be a pest - with the aim of showing its incredible potential through the Beauty of the Installation itself.
From this perspective, the Torricola Garden stands as one of the most interesting emerging realities in the field of peri-urban associationism in the City of Rome.
At the entrance to the Garden, the welcoming infographic reads 'Beauty Will Save the World', freely taken from 'Prince Mishkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot', testifying to the strong design orientation of the theme.
The project is characterised by an inclusion dimension addressed both inside and outside the association that promotes it.
With regard to inward inclusion, practices of shared and participatory governance are promoted, which are expressed in a decision-making model involving all those associated with the association, through constant meetings, autonomy of the people who intend to promote projects within the space, votes in which each person's vote counts in the same way as any other person's, and periodic moments of collecting suggestions and proposals to improve the project itself.
However, as far as inclusion towards the outside is concerned, activities are proposed at highly accessible prices, set in such a way as to guarantee the return of costs, but always of lower amounts than those proposed by the market, in order to guarantee the participation of as many people as possible.
Lastly, inclusion is also pursued in terms of intergenerationality, since the activities and initiatives proposed manage to bring together people of different age groups (children, young people, adults and the elderly) and thus favour virtuous generational exchange logics capable of generating value for the participants in the activities and for the project itself.
In terms of exemplarity, the approach can be considered the best practice to be pursued and replicated since the logic of participatory governance, accessibility of activities and integenerationality could, with the same logic, be replicated in other similar contexts and thus increase both civic participation in projects of a social and cultural nature and the ability to bring together different generations that are too often separated.
We believe that engaging in urban gardens like the Giardino in Torricola can have very lasting consequences.
The hands-on experience of contact with the earth and its cycles can distract from unethical consumption practices; open one's eyes to the state of the environment and the inter-relationships between the local and global environment; strengthen community ties between citizens and induce them to experiment with new, more sustainable lifestyles. Above all, engagement in urban gardens can activate processes of coordinated action between people.
Practices hosted in urban gardens have an ever-increasing hold in contemporary society and - despite the naivety of some gestures - become an opportunity for profound reflection.
Urban gardens make room for widespread engagement, linked to the defence of places and the recovery of disused spaces, offering an alternative setting for sociability, art, and culture.
Urban gardens are replicable in many contexts and can trigger important phenomena of change for the periphery.
The valuable role played by urban agriculture realities in the protection of numerous species of pollinating insects and, more generally, of biodiversity increasingly threatened by relentless land consumption is also recognised.
For this reason, too, urban gardens can be a central place for the activism needed for a new policy of urban re-generation in the age of the Anthropocene.
We are proud of the fact that from 2019 until today thousands of citizens have had the opportunity to visit the Torricola Garden with the conviction that, in addition to having participated in the revolutionary aspect described above, they have derived from it the same psychophysical well-being that we have experienced during our work as volunteer members.
Institutional Stake Holders:
-Municipo VII - Municipality of Rome:
After several meetings with various Municipal Councillors and the visit of the Councillor for Culture and Youth Policies to the Garden, we were granted the patronage of the Municipality and its commitment to support the communication of the proposed initiatives.
-The Appia Antica Regional Park Authority
The cooperation with the Appia Antica Park Authority proved to be crucial, constant, and fruitful in order to identify the main areas of intervention and the possibilities/methods of realizing the removable artefacts present, since this is a restricted archaeological area. The Park Authority made itself available at various technical tables and to the issuing of the various permits required for the works.
-Lazio Region
The Lazio Region supported our project with a contribution of € 18,000 which was fully reimbursed after winning the public notice "Vita-mina G" for the best ideas proposed by young people.
Other Stakeholders
-Social Volunteers who participated pro-actively in the design, realization and maintenance of the spaces, the organization of events and the management of the other Stake Holders. Board members who met on an ongoing basis.
-Ordinary members who benefited from the activities and participated in the proposed events, enabling the growth and economic sustainability of the project.
-Teachers and children of the Montessori School "La Margherita" who benefited from the garden to experiment with alternating teaching between the school building and the garden, at first as an emergency solution during a pandemic and later as a stable solution given the excellent results achieved.
- People taking part in our activities, workshop and events who experiment a renewed sense of social cohesion
-Various entrepreneurial realities of the connected area: Catering Services, Local Farmers, Landscape Architects, Agronomists, Graphic Designers, Nature Technicians and professionals
The skills mainly involved in the first phase of the project and transformed into knowledge that was largely acquired and passed on, definitely concern the agricultural sphere and the technical-practical sphere related to the design and realization of association spaces.
In this project phase, the cooperation of several citizen-volunteers with already matured experience in the areas described above was essential. Particular reference should be made to the neighborhood committee, which is actively and voluntarily involved in the management and redevelopment of large areas of the Aqueduct Park. This committee is mostly composed of retired seniors, who have made themselves available to teach and guide us at various crucial moments. This approach outlines our desire to initiate a project that fits into a framework of widespread inter-generationality. The latter is perceived as an element of richness and preservation of a great deal of knowledge that has been handed down over the centuries and is in danger of being lost in the age of technology.
In the second project phase, the skills and knowledge used were interwoven into a vast transversal network beyond the agricultural and technical-practical sphere mentioned above.
Below is a list of the main knowledge and skills employed:
-Project Skills essential for the realisation of the timetables and the Initial Business Plan.
-Organisational skills indispensable for the organisation of Events in all aspects.
-Didactic Skills used in the school activities hosted and already described.
-Laboratory skills (knowledge of baking, carpentry and handicrafts, herbalism, nature self-production, yoga, etc.).
-Administrative skills indispensable for creating the legal and organisational prerequisites necessary for project implementation and financial reporting.
-Communication and graphic skills, indispensable for keeping members informed of proposed events and sponsorship activities.
Taking the theory of change as a theoretical framework we can represent these dimensions through the following indicators:
Results:
- 2512 associated people
- More than 100 initiatives promoted including workshops, cultural, musical and personal and environmental wellbeing events;
- Didactic oven made of raw earth with a Workshop zone realised in a self-building perspective through the involvement of the local community;
- Realisation of a covered workshop area and functional prototype of a "Compost Toilet", realised in a self-construction perspective through the involvement of the local community;
- Realisation and shared management of an apiary;
- Realisation and shared management of an henhouse;
- Participatory agricultural production managed by members according to the logic of environmental sustainability: olive oil, red wine, vegetable gardens, orchard, aromatic spirals and hydroponic channels
- Outdoor educational path with children outside conventional spaces and linked to the concepts of social cohesion and environmental sustainability
Outcome:
- Increased level of awareness of environmental sustainability issues on the part of participants
- Increased level of competence on the topics of self-building and agricultural production on the part of the participants
- Increased strength of social relations among the people attending the space;
- Increased cultural awareness among people attending the events;
- Increased educational quality for participants in the educational activities with "La Margherita" and "Comics - the international comics school
Impacts:
- Increased social cohesion in the reference context;
- Increased number of citizens adopting sustainable behaviour in the reference context;
- Re-functioning of a disused space with environmental impacts linked to the concept of circular economy;
- Increased ability of the inhabitants of the reference context to think in terms of sharing abilities and participation
The first innovative element refers to the ability to link environmental sustainability issues with the themes of social cohesion, culture, and civic participation.
In fact, in the Garden, environmental awareness activities linked to 'doing' (shared vegetable gardens, participatory bio-building, self-construction that promotes the logic of circular economy, etc.) are flanked by cultural activities, civic participation and socializing. These activities understand the fight against climate change as a holistic fact that cannot be tackled without also recovering the dimensions of sociability, participation and cultural promotion that make cities places capable of aggregating energies and resources capable of providing an answer to the environmental and social crisis of our time.
Another innovative element refers to the ability to bring together, in the same initiative, different age groups. Hence, fostering, as mentioned above, virtuous generational exchanges capable of generating value for people and the project itself.
Also significant is the ability to collaborate with the public body managing the Appia Antica Archaeological Park, in which the garden is located. As such, moments of exchange, comparison, and planning, are often encouraged to understand how the project can bring value to the Appia Antica Park and vice versa.
Another aspect of innovation refers to multifunctionality, understood as the ability to propose activities of a different but nevertheless integrated nature in a coherent manner.
Lastly, innovative is the fact that the project can be understood as a model that can be replicated in other contexts, providing a model of action for the recovery of urban green spaces that could be configured, if set up like the project in question, as many diffuse hubs of sociability, environmental sustainability, and generational encounters.
In terms of Social Approach, the main "keywords" were Inclusiveness and Intergenerationality. In pursuing this approach, we focused on an offer that could, in our opinion, embrace the interests of all members according to the events, making forecasts on the age groups mainly involved and recording the results obtained. In this way, the interest of a particularly diverse pool was gathered, which was able to meet and give rise to constructive discussions and exchanges of views.
So that no* one would feel excluded, we chose to avoid attitudes or activities that could more or less explicitly refer to a particular political or religious orientation.
We have chosen to reject any ethnic or gender distinction as a fundamental requirement for membership of the Association of Social Promotion and to support some neighbouring realities active in the field of disability.
In terms of Practical-Organisational Approaches We have chosen to weigh up strategic decisions by trying to favour Local and Proximity Economies with a view to an increasingly indispensable environmental sustainability.
Internal organisational methods have been facilitated by an increasing use of solutions offered by technology such as On-line registration to the association via 'G-Form' and automatic cataloguing of data and consents. Use of Q-R Code technology to make it easier to leave comments, feedback and proposals. Use of online platforms for board meetings, especially in function of the health situation at certain times. Dedicated members' newsletter for proposals and convocations.
Replicability is perhaps the dimension that best captures the intentions of those who promoted the project.
In fact, it was created with the aim of providing an innovative and creative answer to the question "what can be done in the city with one hectare of land?".
The answers experimented in recent years are diverse and all replicable in other contexts starting from a piece of land or a green space.
One can raise environmental awareness, by recovering the relationship between the citizen and the land that provides him with the food that arrives on his table; one can do cultural promotion, by organising events linked to local traditions and promoting young artists in the area; one can do participation, by involving the users of the space in the process of decision-making and planning activities; we can do education, proposing educational paths with children and young people linked to the themes of environmental and social sustainability; we can network with the local public administration, fostering collaboration logics capable of bringing value to all the parties involved; we can bring together people of different generations, making them dialogue by fostering virtuous and open exchanges; we can do social and environmental impact, putting all these initiatives together in a coherent and integrated programme of activities.
In a nutshell, the project could be replicated in each context where a green space is made available to people who want to be active for their community. By replicating the open and participatory processes proposed by the project we are describing, we could thus develop an urban context characterised by many small gardens spread throughout the city, each with its own specific characteristics, but all capable of generating a positive impact on the territory and the communities of reference, pursuing objectives of environmental sustainability, cultural promotion, inclusion, and social cohesion.
Taking a cue from the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030, the global challenges the concept addresses by providing local solutions related to SDGs 4 (quality education), 11 (sustainable cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production), 13 (climate action) and 15 (life on earth).
With reference to SDG 4, the project aims to propose open-air educational practices with children and young people, in order to provide an educational experience in contact with nature based on the logic of 'doing' and sustainability and to give substance to the vision that sees the city, its spaces and its actors as a teaching body that contributes to the growth of children and young people in the community.
With reference to SDG 11, it provides social and cultural initiatives in an urban yet natural context of rare beauty and encourages cultural and educational production that gives space to co-design, co-production with local actors and, at the same time, enlivens and brings to life the urban context around which it is inserted. This represents an important lever of sociability and agricultural aggregation that strengthens logics of social cohesion and inclusion and makes urban proximity relations stronger, thus making cities stronger and more sustainable places.
With regard to SDG 12, on the other hand, workshop and training initiatives are constantly promoted on the topics of self-building, reuse and the circular economy, in order to promote awareness among participants on the topics of consumption and its methods and provide practical tools to reduce their environmental impact.
SDGs 13 and 15 are transversal in nature and encompass all the activities promoted in the project: vegetarian and km0 food consumption is promoted and environmental sustainability is acted upon on a daily basis as a guiding criterion for any choice.
