Citizens as Co-Implementer – Lab by School Raising Bologna 28.6. – 2.7.2021

Citizens as Co-Implementer – Lab Bologna

28.6. – 2.7.2021 Co-designing a crowdfunding campaign for Testoni Fioravanti school in Bolognina, a multicultural neighborhood

GENERAL STRUCTURE

As you can see looking at the Lab’s Agenda, we divided each working day like this:- first half of the morning: a guided input session about a topic connected to an element which is going to compose our crowdfunding campaign;morning break;- second part of the morning: urban exploring or open discussion about the input session or what we were doing in that moment (inside the working process); - lunch break;

- controra: a practice we kept from the south of Italy which add an additional hour of rest after lunch; - afternoon: working session about the element we explored previously. We did it following the design thinking method as a repeated process of divergent and convergent brainstorming, avoiding judging someone’s idea; then, through the dot voting practice we tried to fix a step of our process on which to continue the work.

Breaks usually are considered just additional time during working moments. We want to keep clear that “freetime” where you can talk and laugh and better know other people is fundamental to creating new human relationships which are one of the most important outputs of these international exchanges.

DAY 1

Since it was the first meeting in person after the pandemic and thinking about where an over-productive mindset brings us as human beings, we decided to give the priority of our lab to our time together, that basically meant that we would stay together sharing good quality lifetime experiences. So we decided never to force our working hours due to the hot temperature we found in Bologna (around 37+ °C everyday), respecting the energies and the characteristics of each participant.

We also, and of course, needed to reach the goal of our lab that was to design a crowdfunding campaign based on a true case study we would have directly observed together in the following days.

Here is the PowerPoint presentation for the introductive day (DAY 1) of our italian laboratory:https://docs.google.com/presentat ion/d/1w9fRyMtylWDWu0JxjuOnsGzRYqqAB Q0czi2FIbG-O24/edit?usp=sharing

DAY 2

During the second day of the lab we start to use the Miro Board we prepared as the anchor point of our work: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_l_gkFsg=/

Immediately we noticed how one of the most important and difficult thing was how to coordinate in the best way people in Bologna and our colleagues who were attending the meeting online (we used Zoom as our working platform).

We introduced Crowdfunding as a way not only to raise money but specially as a practice

hich can connect the different actors who live in or pass across the school: teachers, students, parents, industries, friends, neighbors, school staff in general.

Here is the presentation we use to share with all the participants how a crowdfunding campaign works according to us and to the social meaning we gave to this activity: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12vS Pocvuf7HvxcIMn2R4ZR1LJ1OV4M63LZbYD OFoLPw/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks to the great contribution of the principal mr. Luca Prono, the vice-principal mrs. Cristina Dall’Occa, her colleague Francesca La Ganga and other teachers, we were able to visit Testoni Fioravanti school

We gathered a lot of information that would be useful to use to define the goal of our crowdfunding campaign.

We came back to our working place, Baumhaus’ headquarter, we started to work on the Crowdfunding Canvas, answering fundamental questions which would have helped us to continue our co-creative process.

DAY 3

We began the third day of co-work clustering data we gathered during our visit + interviews at the Testoni Fioravanti institute.

The rest of the day was used to define the goal of our campaign. We wanted to wait for the validation by the principal and vice-principal of the school to design something as useful and concrete as possible. The three ideas we had were: A) An open-air cinema; B) A more inclusive garden; C) A multicultural library

The validation arrived by whatsapp message that evening. They asked us to crowdfund an open air cinema for their school!

DAY 4

The morning of the last but one day of our lab in Bologna was dedicated to finding out the title and the subtitle for our campaign.

We chose cuore aperta - occhi aperta: open air cinema bolognina. During the co-creative process, some of the international participants tried to translate in a wrong italian way the initial english concept open hearts - open eyes: open air cinema bolognina. We, together, found to keep the error into the translation for three main reasons: it sounds funny; if you communicate it, for example, on posters around the neighborhood it would catch your attention because of the error; usually people from abroad commit some error when they try to talk a new language and this is cute. To us this kind of wrong language could be declined in many different ways during a communication campaign.

After we defined the title and the subtitle of the campaign we began to work on the rewards.

We combined our answers on the Crowdfunding Canvas about our resources, potential crowdfunders and allies to figure out some ideas of possible rewards. As we said since the beginning, to School Raising a crowdfunding project doesn't mean just to raise money but to improve people we are working with and the community they are in touch with. It was also important to understand how it costs to produce our rewards under many points of view (time, production, sustainability). As usual we began with a brainstorming without any judgment and then we tried to choose together the best ones. Instead of using the dot voting practice like in other occasions, we play the game: OK, the price is right (an old italian TV show). We

enjoyed it a lot and we considered it another (and a great one) output of our lab: to generate genuine relations between us. Our final rewards:

DAY 5

During the last morning we set our communication plan: it’s important, as we explained during the introduction to the practice of crowdfunding to take care about our campaign before, during and after it is published. Usually we suggest starting to plan it 4 weeks before it goes online and to last 4 weeks after it finishes because you need time to prepare all the materials to support it and, obviously, rewards for your supporters.

The last, but not least, element to success in a crowdfunding campaign we showed was the video to promote it and how to make it. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to

finalize it but we did our best thinking about some storyboard’s concepts (we had two of them that we mixed together) and then drawing it as you can see below. Before the end of the lab we watched together a video message our french partners sent us on what would've happened in Toulouse, the next appointment of our co-engage group. We had just some time to say goodbye to each other before testing ourselves on Covid-19 and leaving for our homes.