A participation project for the former Carmine church

The former Carmine church, in the historic centre of Medicina, closed in 2016 due to needing consolidation and restoration work. Until then it had been an important venue for cultural and artistic activities promoted by numerous organisations from the local and neighbouring areas, which succeeded in engaging different audiences.

In 2018, Carisbo’s “Rigenerazione Urbana” tender made it possible to start work on making the former church sacristy accessible again. While the work was taking place, the Municipality of Medicina also launched a process designed to regenerate the premises, writing a Manifesto, setting up a Management Committee and identifying the fields of activities to be catered to in a new venue in the Carmine sacristy.

The next step involves launching a participatory process that will involve the community in establishing how the Carmine church will be reused.

Engagement is fundamental to the Municipality of Medicina. Over recent years, this essential tool has been used to get local people involved in discussing policies, encouraging them to work alongside the administration to come up with a shared development and regeneration process for the town.

The Carmine church represents an additional testbed for these practices, as part of an experiment conducted by the Municipality of Medicina and BAM! Strategie Culturali since 2020, thanks to the project’s candidacy – drafted by the Municipality of Medicina with BAM!’s support – for the Regione Emilia-Romagna’s Partecipazione tender.

The participatory process is made up of two phases, each of which comprises a number of intermediate phases. BAM! will play an active part in all of them.

Phase 1, sharing: mapping, analysis and a series of public meetings to discover what the people of Medicina need and require from their town, publishing these findings in a document with a view to identifying particular areas of activity around which the Carmine’s future offer can be constructed.

Phase 2, co-planning: following preparatory training provided by BAM! through a series of meetings, a small group made up of associations, students and local people, will meet to co-plan activities, actions and a coordination system for the Carmine church, to be implemented from 2021 onwards.

BAM! Strategie Culturali will have the role of developing and planning the public meetings, as well as facilitating the meetings themselves.

During every phase of the process, BAM! will undertake to develop communication materials designed to raise awareness about project progress and involve more people.