Monkey Tree – Albero Scimmia
Olivia Conti Emanuela Annadesideria De Nitto Konrad Ruben Freyer Nikola Mrkobrad
This project is the result of a collaboration with Villa delle Rose, a youth organization based in Don Bosco. We proposed to organize a workshop in their space, focusing on co-design and hands-on creation. Our main goal was to involve the participants (age ca. 7–15) in a process of shaping their environment by themselves.
Through conversations with the educators, we quickly learned that their mission is to provide an alternative experience to the everyday school and home environment, where the children too often get told that they are not enough. In contrast, Villa is a place free of judgment and instead a space of support and encouragement. We incorporated this attitude as best as we could into our process, aiming to value every contribution from the participants of our workshop: The first day was a collective design session where we gathered ideas and drawings from the children. The remaining two days were dedicated to building what the group envisioned. The children’s ideas, skills, and interests significantly shaped both the form and aesthetic of the final result. On the evening of the final workshop day, we organized an aperitivo by a fire with the educators and some of the children.
During our workshop we handed out three disposable film cameras to capture the project from the participants point of view. The following pictures were taken by the kids:
