YAK AROUND

The YAK AROUND project experiments with an innovative way of merging a cultural program with the regeneration of urban public space. Born at the intersection of the work of the Karakorum cultural association, based in Varese, and  urban planning researchers of DAStU, the project aimed to tighten the relationship between Spazio Yak (a community theater) with the suburb of Bustecche, in which it settled a few years ago.

In the first period of its establishment in the district, the Karakorum association, despite a moderate success with a public and a wider context, failed entirely to attract the interest of the established community.

The project responds to this distance between the community and the territory with an open and incremental methodology (previously developed by CALL in: Moro A., Concilio G., Tosoni I., Medina T., Longo A., Carli P., Pettinaroli M., Acerbi E., “Playtime an action framework for public space in fragile urban contexts”,2020) displayed through an inclusive cultural/artistic programme. The ambition was here to obtain, on the one hand, qualitative transformation of the public space, on the other, community inclusion.

Graduality, experimentation/redefinition and co-creation are the main characteristics of the project. Organized in different phases (sensing, triggering, catalysis, consolidation, release), a rich program of artistic actions was promoted to rethink the public space around the theater, in particular De Salvo square, which was conceived and experienced as a “permeable” place and in passing.

During the two year’s project, the theater has gone beyond the confines of its walls, into people’s daily lives, staging shows in the courtyards of social housing and under the balconies, transforming the neighborhood into a tableau of urban games, sharing music and lunches with the inhabitants. This engagement allowed the public to also play an active role by rethinking the space of the theater and the public related space together.

In the end, Spazio Yak has improved its role in the community, becoming a real node of multiple practices for the Bustecche neighborhood. The outcomes and legacies of the project are contaminating other newborn processes of public spaces regeneration and of community life activation thanks to artistic performances.