Lambrogino Award on World Water Day

On World Water Day, Sunday 23 March, the Lambrogino Award was bestowed at Casa di Quartiere Parea, in Milan’s Ponte Lambro neighbourhood. Before an audience of local residents and institutions, the partner organisations behind the award presented the winning projects. A fitting setting for a celebration rooted in community and place.

The Lambrogino Award is promoted as part of the activities of the Milanese pilot of the PALIMPSEST project, and aims to promote initiatives that address the complex relationship between communities and their rivers. Symbolically inspired by the Ambrogino d’Oro, a historic civic award given by the City of Milan, it inaugurates a new paradigm of public recognition: the river itself becomes the focus of the award, inviting citizens, institutions and local organisations to imagine new forms of civic engagement in this time of climate crisis.

A total of nineteen initiatives were submitted to the call, showcasing a wide range of actions dedicated to the care of the Lambro River.

The Lambrogino Award went to the project Redevelopment of the Lambro river bends and construction of educational classrooms in San Donato Milanese by the Municipality of San Donato Milanese with WWF Sud Milano, recognised for the innovativeness of its environmental education actions and its ability to foster an effective process of collaboration between municipal administration and local associations.

The Special Mention for Artistic and Environmental Actions was awarded to the documentary Ciar cum’è l’acqua del Lamber, directed by Elena Maggioni and Hulda Federica Orrù and produced by Legambiente. The film traces the story of the Lambro River, with a particular focus on the ecological disaster caused by the oil spill in 2010, one of the worst environmental emergencies in the river’s recent history, and the long aftermath that followed.

The Special Mention for Technical Institutional actions went to A.I.Po (Agenzia Interregionale per il fiume Po), for its project to restore areas for the free expansion of the river flow and to rehabilitate riverine areas through the acquisition and demolition of buildings.

The Lambrogino Award is intended as PALIMPSEST‘s lasting legacy for the territories along the Lambro river – a way of celebrating and amplifying actions of mutual care between people and their waterways. That spirit is embodied in the trophy itself: a bottle containing an evocative message from the river, inscribed with a quotation by Erri De Luca that speaks directly to the award’s purpose: “Chi vede un fiume guarda il verso in cui scorre, dove scende secondo la corrente. Ma il futuro di un fiume è alla sorgente.” [“When you look at a river, you see the direction in which it flows, where it descends with the current. But a river’s future lies at its source.”].