‘Un Sacco di Palermo’ is a modular pedagogical kit that aims to help teachers and educators introduce the sensitive topic of Palermo’s recent urban development to primary and secondary school curricula. The modules of the kit address environmental, urban, and social consequences of the city’s unregulated development, based on research compiled by the University of Palermo, local activists, , the archive and the mapping of the Urban Ecomuseum ‘Mare Memoria Viva’, and Manifesta 12 artists.
The kit contains a set of activities encouraging students to investigate the multiple aspects of the city’s urban transformation through collective, class-based games, neighbourhood field trips, individual research, and cross-institutional collaborations. The goal of the activities is to reflect upon the impact of the events that began in the 1950s, during what was called ‘Il Sacco di Palermo’, and the repercussions of this period, which affected the life of the city on all different levels.
The project ‘Un Sacco di Palermo’ is realised in collaboration with Assessorato alla Scuola del Comune di Palermo.
The kit will be distributed in Palermo schools and will be used by Manifesta 12 mediators during the biennial. During Manifesta, a prototype of the kit will be introduced at Teatro Garibaldi. At the end of the project the kit will be used as a tool used by the Urban Ecomuseum for its educational programme.
The life cycle of the project:
November 2017 – January 2018: Research
January – March 2018: Design of the activities
March – April 2018: Test sessions of the kit in four public schools
April – May 2018: Adjustments, production of the kit
30 May 2018: public presentation at the Ecomuseo Urbano Mare Memoria Viva
June – October 2018: Presentation about the kit at Teatro Garibaldi for Manifesta 12 visitors
20 September 2018: free training for school teachers from 9.00 to 13.00 at the Istituto Comprensivo Leonardo Sciascia (via Francesco de Gobbis, 13, Palermo). In order to participate, teachers can register here until 18 September.
November 2018 onwards: Use of kits at the Urban Ecomuseum ‘Mare memoria viva’
‘Un Sacco di Palermo’ is developed by Valentina Mandalari with input from Daniele Crisci, Davide Leone, and students and teachers from the Sferracavallo, Arenella, and Sperone Pertini schools.
Project Partner: Urban Ecomuseum ‘Mare Memoria Viva’
An ecomuseum is a different sort of museum that tries to foster a sense of a place, local participation and the welfare and development of local communities.
Mare Memoria Viva is the first multimedia and interactive museum in Sicily, it is a digital story-telling about the sea and urban and social transformations of Palermo.
It’s a community and cultural space where people are directly integrated into the narration, a collective artwork based on memories of the people living near the sea, a way to connect places and memories and to empower communities supporting active citizenship and cultural development.
We work especially involving students and inhabitants in non formal education projects, urban explorations and workshops, exhibitions, meetings, small conferences about citizenship, art, migration, science, story-telling, environment and placemaking.
