An Ideal City is necessarily also an accessible city in its different articulations: economic, cultural and social, sensory, cognitive, and physical-perceptual.
Torino, UNESCO Creative City of Design, is working on this topic using design as a planning methodology that takes into account the needs of citizen and opportunities for them, starting from the ideation and planning of services.
CONCEPT
The Sense of Cultural Heritage: an Issue of Accessibility is the title of a document which Torino has prepared for the European Year of Cultural Heritage, that explains what Torino means by accessibility, a concept of inclusion not limited to physical factors but regarding expecially cultural, social and economic ones. In brief it can be summarized in the following sentences:
(…)The obstacles are innumerable and they are scattered across various domains, from architectural barriers that prevent the movement of users with mobility problems, to the financial contribution often required that proves challenging for some groups of users, to the cognitive difficulty of approaching specialized languages, to the discomfort which may arise when coming into contact with some rituals of cultural consumption. Moreover, different types of difficulty, constraint or obstacles do not act separately, affecting specific groups, but reinforce and strengthen each other by multiplying their dissuasive effect(…).
Torino, in its role of Italian City Coordinator of Design Pavillion, and in agreement with Detroit – Coordinator and Kortrijk – Deputy Coordinator of Design Cluster, asks the other UNESCO Creative Cities of Design for an exchange on this topic.
The aims are:
- to create mutual knowledge of projects – better if collaborative ones and developed in the four domains focused on by cluster cities – that have improved the quality of life of citizens, in the belief that sharing knowledge and experience can help to shape better cities, open to everyone.
- to promote the UNESCO Creative Cities of Design’s work to Italian audience.
- to show the activities pursued by the Cluster.
CALL
Therefore, UNESCO Creative Cities of Design are invited to
- To submit a project for a service, place or product which improves one or more aspects of the life of its inhabitants in terms of cultural, economic, social, sensory, cognitive, physical-perceptual accessibility.
- In particular, the call seeks collaborative projects developed in business, policy, education, communication domains. It is required that cities submitting collaborative projects submit their project jointly. In each case, please emphasize the cultural aspects of the projects.
- If a city does not have a collaborative project, we invite it to submit a local project that the city is interested to collaborate on with other UNESCO creative cities.
- Projects should be submitted in English.
The projects will be showcased in a display for the Design Pavilion and will be incorporated into the Design Cities activity report to the network during the Annual Conference. The projects will also be shared in the form of an interactive workshop during the Annual Conference that invites fellow Creative Cities Network members and members of the local community to explore strategies on how to collaborate in a meaningful way to develop happier and more inclusive cities everywhere.
DEADLINE
It should be returned together with pictures and or videos to design@comune.torino.it within April 19, 2019.
APPLICATION
Please fill in the form here.