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Strade scolastiche: supporting changes in public spaces
Year
2024-2025
Client
Comune di Torino
Context
How do you help a community imagine and experience a different kind of public space?
Questions like this gave rise to the strade scolastiche project: one of the projects through which the City of Turin, thanks to funding obtained through the Regione Piemonte Ambiti Urbani call for submissions, carried out a series of actions and events to transform the streets around several school buildings. The goal? To reduce the space used by cars and for parking, and to create safe and pleasant spaces to pass through and inhabit.
One of the city’s needs was to support citizens before, during and after the transformation, helping them understand, experience and make the changes their own.
Forestae’s role and process
In collaboration with Elisa Gallo, journalist and consultant in communication and participation on issues related to public space and active mobility, and with Decisio, an Italian-Dutch consultancy firm specializing in mobility and public space, we built communication and participation paths dedicated to various stakeholders: people living in or frequenting the neighborhoods involved, along with pupils, parents, teachers and all school staff.
In some classes, workshops on public spaces were led by Ms Gallo in collaboration with MAcA – Museo A come Ambiente, in which children, through play, analyzed how much of today’s urban space is intentionally designed, and imagined how those spaces could be instead.
Forestae selected and involved three internationally recognized street artists from Piedmont (Ufocinque, Alice Lotti and Pepe Gaka), asking them to lead school workshops and assigning each of them a school street on which to create a large-scale mural, either on the pavement or on a wall.
In these artistic workshops, led by our co-founder and art director Simone Paoli, children created drawings and collages together with the street artists, which later inspired the actual artwork painted on these new school streets at the end of the process, transforming them into “storytelling spaces.”
The physical transformation of the urban space involved weeks or months of construction. The various phases were supported by structured visual communication: we designed materials such as banners, flyers and posters to explain the ongoing changes to citizens.
In addition, we created permanent informational panels which were installed on site once the work was completed, explaining how and why those spaces had been transformed and what the benefits were for the community.
Scuola dell’infanzia “Europea”, via Lodovica
Scuola dell’infanzia “Europea”, via Lodovica
Istituto Comprensivo Alvaro – Gobetti, via Romita
Istituto Comprensivo Alvaro – Gobetti, via Romita
Istituto Comprensivo da Vinci – Frank, via Cavagnolo
Results
Through this project, we confirmed that art, communication and participation can help accompany people and communities through changes: changes in public spaces, but also in their own habits and, more generally, in the way they see the world around them.
The City of Turin won the Urban Award 2025, a prize established by Ludovica Casellati, promoted by ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) and supported by Intesa Sanpaolo, which recognizes municipalities that stand out for innovative projects in sustainable mobility and urban regeneration.
And one of the projects mentioned in the announcement dossier was indeed the school streets project.
Services provided
Identità visiva e posizionamento di brand
Brand & graphic design
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