Manifesto to the Future is a workshop that, through art and play, offered the children of two second grade
classes a space to reflect and develop strategies to imagine the present and the future through the formalisation of visions and desires.
The intervention was part of the centenary of the school Casa del Sole, Comprehensive Institute (primary and secondary school institute in Milan), which is located in a working-class neighbourhood of Milan and where children and young people from more than a hundred communities of different origins are enrolled (in Italy there is no ius soli, so children born and raised in Italy are considered foreigners by the state).
It will be the children who will live in this world; what we are leaving behind is not sustainable.
So why not have them design it, called in the future to be its protagonists?
Acknowledging this role to them, respecting them, means knowing how to welcome what they can express and what they can give us. Listening to them means helping them understand and giving them space for confrontation to build a collective quest for change. Giving children the chance to elaborate questions about the present favours the possibility for adults to have more complex answers at disposal.
The children developed a statement of values and desires for collective life within our city.
Through a public performance they formed a procession and with posters, banners and megaphones they shouted out their demands.
This process will be part of the work to be set up within the DePot residence, to be developed together with new researches and reflections shared with workers.
The final result of Manifesto to the Future will be an artist’s book and an exhibition, which will form part of a new collection in the Fondazione ISEC archive. The final project will be presented and discussed in several public meetings.
Manifesto al Futuro is carried out within the framework of the project Matrice Lavoro.
Supported by Musil - Museo dell’industria e del lavoro, BASE Milano, Coclea, Comune di Cedegolo,
Fondazione ISEC, DePOT a partnership of over 35 research centres, industrial museums, labour archives, trade unions and other organizations across Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and the United States.