Critical Garden is a movement that has no real founder nor an exact date of birth. Its origins date back to the early '70s, when the citizens of the great cities of North America and particularly New York, tired of the indifference of the government towards more peripheral areas and degraded, have voluntarily taken the initiative to transform some public lands abandoned - the so-called vacant lots - in gardens / allotments and self-administered municipalities.
From then until now, these "wild gardens", known as "community gardens" have spread and multiplied in many other cities not only in the United States but also in Europe and Australia, and constitute an important resource for citizens, both in terms of landscape and environment, which - perhaps especially - from the perspective of the social fabric, particularly in neighborhoods of low economic value and more productive, and consequently neglected by local authorities.
In fact, these public gardens, often very large, not only accepts many species of plants and vegetables, which contribute materially to improving the quality of life of citizens, but are also a major focus and socialization for children and adults every social background, a truly public urban space, self-managed and shared.
So, thanks to the possibilities of new media on a global scale, the spread of hundreds of blogs and websites are now many activists that reproduce in their cities, though with some variation due to the inevitable local differences, the model of community gardens as a viable alternative, built from the bottom, the green public institutionalized.
In Italy, the name "Critical Garden" want to do echo "Critical mass" - and participated in social movement became known around the world - as a practice born in the city by collecting common need: to restore the public space the function would be responsible for the definition, that of a gathering, place a catalyst for collective activities. In addition to the collective dimension, these practices are bound together by another aspect of the fund and the features: spontaneity.
Like any mass bike ride is a bike ride and spontaneous collective ( "we do not block traffic, we are traffic" reads one of the slogan), so any practice of Critical Gardeners arises from spontaneous action-com subsidiaries: walk in Green area of spontaneous as if it were a public garden, growing plants and flowers in the grass median or roadside, turn an abandoned piece of land or an "urban void" in a green space and live where they exchange knowledge and sociality.
Garden is critical, therefore the name of a movement, or rather a network of movements born about three years ago by the desire of some Italian guerrilla gardening groups to share their passion for the "wild garden" and to enrich their experiences with the experiences other activists in Milan and Bologna, Turin and in Rome, take flower beds and derelict land.
At a first national meeting held in June 2007 in the public space of self-XM24 Bologna, have followed a series of relationships, exchanges and collaborations between different groups that have since continued, each in their own city, to involve new activists, to launch new projects and events, to organize exhibitions and workshops. Until Saturday, June 6, when the Festival Art course directed by Lorenza Zambon, was held the 2nd national meeting of Critical Garden.
In the heart of Parco Nord Milano a farm surrounded by nature for a whole day has hosted exhibitions, videos, workshops, installations, stand for the exchange of seeds and the sale of plants and especially the testimonies and stories of the main groups of gardening abuse currently present in Italy. The event, curated by Michela Pasquali (criticalgarden.netsons.org / wp) and Nora Bertolotti (landgrab.noblogs.org) also attended some of the realities that deal with public parks, shared planning of teaching gardens, therapeutic and social . Among the pioneers of guerrilla green Italy, the Landgrab of Milan, an informal group of gardeners who are distinguished by particular attention to plants as living things that should never be neglected or abandoned when such a bed or a temporary garden intended for demolition. That would Nora and Stephen are responsible for transferring the plants or trees in another empty lot or keep them from waiting for a new place. So far the team has made several flowerbeds Landgrab Island in the district of Milan and in other areas particularly susceptible to an intervention of rehabilitation. Even the plants, flowers and shrubs are carefully selected for their compatibility and their resistance characteristics. Their actions usually lasts an entire day catching the attention of passersby and onlookers who often work together, provide materials and tools, participate in impromptu miniworkshop gardening abusive. One of the main objectives Landgrab effort is to build social relations with local residents who often made aware of these spontaneous action, dealing in first person in the maintenance of flower beds.
The association Roman 4Cantoni (4cantoni.blogspot.com), consisting of three architects, a forester, a graph and an economist Rather, the purpose of raising awareness of people through the transformation of an everyday place, but anonymously, in a place approved and participated. Their actions consist mostly for temporary installations of trails built with wooden benches and flower beds or mobile carts which are then filled with soil, seeds and plants inviting citizens to participate. The 4 cantons have also created a collective vegetable garden in Salerno, and promoted several initiatives aimed at raising awareness of citizens to their own ecological footprint through recycling art. Finally were the protagonists of the initiative Stop by the silence, an installation in the gardens of Piazza Maggiore in Palermo, in collaboration with AddioPizzoper protest against the conspiracy of silence that accompanies the racket of lace.
More heterogeneous group of Shovels Badola (badilibadola.ning.com), about thirty activists among gardeners, laborers, engineers and students of Turin and its province. This collective training more recently, acts almost always at night planning their actions in the network, through their website, forums and exchanges of mail migration.
The circle closes with the collective Crepe Urban (crepeurbane.noblogs.org) which among others stands for a particular location within the urban area and a footprint more markedly political. Cracks Urban was born about two years ago in Bologna in the public space and is active as a self-XM24-resistant urban ecosystem production flow dominant, the logic of speculation, all those dynamics that continually steal the land to its inhabitants and vice versa. Inspired by plants and trees which arose spontaneously in the former vegetable market now abandoned for nearly ten years, these activists have wanted to claim the material value but also symbolic extensive documentation photographic atlas of natural plants for the use of inhabitants of Bologna for survival in an era of crisis. " The exhibition created in 2007 was made this winter the Urban Center of Bologna.
Cracks in these two years Urban has consolidated their presence in the territory, and in particular within the Bolognina, historic working-class district of Bologna, characterized by a strong popular today and multicultural hit by a radical urban transformation that will certainly have consequences its inhabitants. These activists have taken part in the first round table of participatory planning that preceded the approval of the project proposes a self-ortho garden inside the huge park that will be done right next to XM24.
Subsequently, they continued to "guard" the area of the market - that, pending the actual implementation of the park, will remain abandoned for many years - through numerous social and cultural rights of primary interest to local residents. Cracks Urbane is an independent magazine that after the first two issues has doubled its cover to include the additional magazine field (www.campiaperti.org), named after the homonymous association of producers and consumers who work and commitment to support organic farming and farmers.
The magazine was founded in fact, precisely in order to expand the concept of crack urban reality to all those who exploit the margins, the gaps and holes in the management of the rational exploitation of the territory to create new forms of social relationship and not necessarily related to the ratio of production consumption. In all this perfectly fits the experience of open fields that mix producers and consumers, cities and countryside, producing fruits and vegetables but also social and culture through the three markets, direct sales and organic appetizers that are held weekly at XM24, Vag61 and the School of Peace in the neighborhood Savena.
These are the realities of movement are now well established for some years that they face during the day at the park north of Milan, but there were also the novelties and surprises including safe signals from the infant project Playground.
Playground is a garden city born a few months ago in one of the patches of land between the houses that are resistant asphalt of the city of Milan. To animate and 'a bunch of people who have seen growing out the plants and seeds on their balconies and in the face of such abundance, have felt the need to invade playfully urban space. For young activists Playground "a garden is a microsystem, consisting of common work, planning and dreams. The seeds reproduce and barrier-free travel as if they were shared files in a P2P network. The fruits and flowers of a garden are numerous, colorful and spread through rhizomes. Food waste turned into fertilizer and fertile soil, smelling like a forest ". So through cooperation within an urban garden space is constructed both physical design where concrete networking practices, knowledge and fruits.
From then until now, these "wild gardens", known as "community gardens" have spread and multiplied in many other cities not only in the United States but also in Europe and Australia, and constitute an important resource for citizens, both in terms of landscape and environment, which - perhaps especially - from the perspective of the social fabric, particularly in neighborhoods of low economic value and more productive, and consequently neglected by local authorities.
In fact, these public gardens, often very large, not only accepts many species of plants and vegetables, which contribute materially to improving the quality of life of citizens, but are also a major focus and socialization for children and adults every social background, a truly public urban space, self-managed and shared.
So, thanks to the possibilities of new media on a global scale, the spread of hundreds of blogs and websites are now many activists that reproduce in their cities, though with some variation due to the inevitable local differences, the model of community gardens as a viable alternative, built from the bottom, the green public institutionalized.
In Italy, the name "Critical Garden" want to do echo "Critical mass" - and participated in social movement became known around the world - as a practice born in the city by collecting common need: to restore the public space the function would be responsible for the definition, that of a gathering, place a catalyst for collective activities. In addition to the collective dimension, these practices are bound together by another aspect of the fund and the features: spontaneity.
Like any mass bike ride is a bike ride and spontaneous collective ( "we do not block traffic, we are traffic" reads one of the slogan), so any practice of Critical Gardeners arises from spontaneous action-com subsidiaries: walk in Green area of spontaneous as if it were a public garden, growing plants and flowers in the grass median or roadside, turn an abandoned piece of land or an "urban void" in a green space and live where they exchange knowledge and sociality.
Garden is critical, therefore the name of a movement, or rather a network of movements born about three years ago by the desire of some Italian guerrilla gardening groups to share their passion for the "wild garden" and to enrich their experiences with the experiences other activists in Milan and Bologna, Turin and in Rome, take flower beds and derelict land.
At a first national meeting held in June 2007 in the public space of self-XM24 Bologna, have followed a series of relationships, exchanges and collaborations between different groups that have since continued, each in their own city, to involve new activists, to launch new projects and events, to organize exhibitions and workshops. Until Saturday, June 6, when the Festival Art course directed by Lorenza Zambon, was held the 2nd national meeting of Critical Garden.
In the heart of Parco Nord Milano a farm surrounded by nature for a whole day has hosted exhibitions, videos, workshops, installations, stand for the exchange of seeds and the sale of plants and especially the testimonies and stories of the main groups of gardening abuse currently present in Italy. The event, curated by Michela Pasquali (criticalgarden.netsons.org / wp) and Nora Bertolotti (landgrab.noblogs.org) also attended some of the realities that deal with public parks, shared planning of teaching gardens, therapeutic and social . Among the pioneers of guerrilla green Italy, the Landgrab of Milan, an informal group of gardeners who are distinguished by particular attention to plants as living things that should never be neglected or abandoned when such a bed or a temporary garden intended for demolition. That would Nora and Stephen are responsible for transferring the plants or trees in another empty lot or keep them from waiting for a new place. So far the team has made several flowerbeds Landgrab Island in the district of Milan and in other areas particularly susceptible to an intervention of rehabilitation. Even the plants, flowers and shrubs are carefully selected for their compatibility and their resistance characteristics. Their actions usually lasts an entire day catching the attention of passersby and onlookers who often work together, provide materials and tools, participate in impromptu miniworkshop gardening abusive. One of the main objectives Landgrab effort is to build social relations with local residents who often made aware of these spontaneous action, dealing in first person in the maintenance of flower beds.
The association Roman 4Cantoni (4cantoni.blogspot.com), consisting of three architects, a forester, a graph and an economist Rather, the purpose of raising awareness of people through the transformation of an everyday place, but anonymously, in a place approved and participated. Their actions consist mostly for temporary installations of trails built with wooden benches and flower beds or mobile carts which are then filled with soil, seeds and plants inviting citizens to participate. The 4 cantons have also created a collective vegetable garden in Salerno, and promoted several initiatives aimed at raising awareness of citizens to their own ecological footprint through recycling art. Finally were the protagonists of the initiative Stop by the silence, an installation in the gardens of Piazza Maggiore in Palermo, in collaboration with AddioPizzoper protest against the conspiracy of silence that accompanies the racket of lace.
More heterogeneous group of Shovels Badola (badilibadola.ning.com), about thirty activists among gardeners, laborers, engineers and students of Turin and its province. This collective training more recently, acts almost always at night planning their actions in the network, through their website, forums and exchanges of mail migration.
The circle closes with the collective Crepe Urban (crepeurbane.noblogs.org) which among others stands for a particular location within the urban area and a footprint more markedly political. Cracks Urban was born about two years ago in Bologna in the public space and is active as a self-XM24-resistant urban ecosystem production flow dominant, the logic of speculation, all those dynamics that continually steal the land to its inhabitants and vice versa. Inspired by plants and trees which arose spontaneously in the former vegetable market now abandoned for nearly ten years, these activists have wanted to claim the material value but also symbolic extensive documentation photographic atlas of natural plants for the use of inhabitants of Bologna for survival in an era of crisis. " The exhibition created in 2007 was made this winter the Urban Center of Bologna.
Cracks in these two years Urban has consolidated their presence in the territory, and in particular within the Bolognina, historic working-class district of Bologna, characterized by a strong popular today and multicultural hit by a radical urban transformation that will certainly have consequences its inhabitants. These activists have taken part in the first round table of participatory planning that preceded the approval of the project proposes a self-ortho garden inside the huge park that will be done right next to XM24.
Subsequently, they continued to "guard" the area of the market - that, pending the actual implementation of the park, will remain abandoned for many years - through numerous social and cultural rights of primary interest to local residents. Cracks Urbane is an independent magazine that after the first two issues has doubled its cover to include the additional magazine field (www.campiaperti.org), named after the homonymous association of producers and consumers who work and commitment to support organic farming and farmers.
The magazine was founded in fact, precisely in order to expand the concept of crack urban reality to all those who exploit the margins, the gaps and holes in the management of the rational exploitation of the territory to create new forms of social relationship and not necessarily related to the ratio of production consumption. In all this perfectly fits the experience of open fields that mix producers and consumers, cities and countryside, producing fruits and vegetables but also social and culture through the three markets, direct sales and organic appetizers that are held weekly at XM24, Vag61 and the School of Peace in the neighborhood Savena.
These are the realities of movement are now well established for some years that they face during the day at the park north of Milan, but there were also the novelties and surprises including safe signals from the infant project Playground.
Playground is a garden city born a few months ago in one of the patches of land between the houses that are resistant asphalt of the city of Milan. To animate and 'a bunch of people who have seen growing out the plants and seeds on their balconies and in the face of such abundance, have felt the need to invade playfully urban space. For young activists Playground "a garden is a microsystem, consisting of common work, planning and dreams. The seeds reproduce and barrier-free travel as if they were shared files in a P2P network. The fruits and flowers of a garden are numerous, colorful and spread through rhizomes. Food waste turned into fertilizer and fertile soil, smelling like a forest ". So through cooperation within an urban garden space is constructed both physical design where concrete networking practices, knowledge and fruits.
