We want to contribute to shifting paradigms of understanding our individual and collective identities; and an increase in empathy, societal cohesion and understanding of diversity. Equally as important and perhaps more difficult than that is the fundamental challenge of how to craft expressions/messages in such a way that they reach the human side of all individuals, no matter what intellectual/conscious stance they have on complex issues such as immigration and identity. The initiative works to harness the ability of artistic expressions and modes of thinking to provide us, as humans, a means to appreciate, understand and interpret our surroundings and circumstances.

Luoghi Comuni is implemented in the mode of a replicable format-based approach (rather than as a finite project). Conscious emphasis is placed on an approach of cooperation and co-creation with local institutions and organisations. In collaboration with local organisations, we have been collecting the voices of indigenes and foreigners, as they explain what they feel, how they live and how they met each other. The methodology used to achieve the project aims and goals is based on the belief that integration begins with mutual awareness. The final messages/expressions contained in the posters, banners and other materials are the end product of information elicited in the course of carefully conducted dense interviews with participants. The format is made of the picture of the participant and an evocative poetic phrase describing his/her experience. As the site of intervention, we chose 'Luoghi Comuni'; meeting spaces between different personal stories and moments of communication and learning for diverse people: the means of transportation within cities. The format has also been used in a slightly modified, more targeted way with children within selected schools.

Since 2009, Luoghi Comuni has covered six Italian cities of Milan, Naples, Modena, Parma, Lampedusa and Palermo. Posters and banners were displayed in and on various means of transportation in these cities, handbills and catalogues were also published. A collective video, Io sono qui perché, was created in 2013 from a laboratory within the Fermo Corni Professional Institute in Modena, organised by the associations Modena per gli altri (Moxa) and Voice off in collaboration with lettera27. Another result of the co-creational approach to working is that it has built up the capacity of local organisations to think and implement their own initiatives in different creative ways.

In the course of 2013, the project Common places/short stories of migrants inspired workshops on migration designed and implemented in secondary schools in different Italian cities like Modena and Parma. These projects demonstrate how the stories active processes of active involvement of persons and institutions of the local territories, experimenting with new forms of active citizenship and participation. The project managed also to develop collaboration and partnership among various institutions in different Italian cities and at local and national level.

Owing to the varying scope and different contexts in which it has been implemented, the citizens and inhabitants of Milan, Naples, Modena, Parma, Lampedusa, Palermo, can be counted amongst those who have seen, and been positively affected by these stories. So far, over 160 stories/expressions have been shared.

One essential thing about Luoghi Comuni is the co-creational nature of how it is implemented. You can say that this attitude and these relationships are its main resource. It brings together a wide array of individuals, organisations and institutions with aligned interests who all play different roles. The funds needed depend on the capacity of the organizations to build partnerships and shared value approach with the project’s stakeholders (i.e. public transport companies, municipalities, advertising space owners, etc.).