“E’ permesso? La mia parte nel mondo” is an educational and creative workshop held in the 2018-19 academic year on Social Communication and Contemporary Photography. The project involved a group of students from overseas hosted by the Centro per l’Istruzione degli Adulti di Rimini (CPIA 1 RIMINI) a school that runs courses in adult literacy and Italian culture.
The project name is a play on words referring both to the Italian expression, “E’ permesso?” which is used to mean ‘Can I come in?’ when people knock on the door, and its literal meaning ‘Is it permitted?’ which alludes to the permit for residency [permesso di soggiorno] required by third country nationals living in Italy.
The workshop was conceived and run by Communication Designer Ilaria Montanari and Photographer & Editor Daniele Lisi who both worked as facilitators on this project. It was added as an extra activity as part the Italian course taught by Giulia Tiburzi at the CPIA school in Rimini.
During the workshop, the students, who all come from different countries in the world, learned the Italian language through design practices including cooperative learning, design thinking and graphic facilitation, learning to tell their stories to one another creatively, also using the principles of visual communication and photography. The resulting series of portrait posters allowed students to freely express their many different identities with complete sincerity: a birth identity, a cultural identity and a newly acquired Italian identity.
Using posters is still one of the most effective ways of getting through to people of all backgrounds via creative, visual and verbal media since anyone can intuitively grasp their meaning – they offer a snapshot picture of the voices of all migrant students.
This workshop aims to communicate and share community values: civil co-existence and inclusiveness. It offers a bridge able to unite Italian nationals with newly arrived migrants by helping to raise the level of general literacy of an entire community while promoting greater integration and fighting cultural prejudice.
Ilaria Montanari After first gaining experience at Benetton’s Communication Research Centre ‘Fabrica’, Ilaria now specialises in communication design for social, territory, culture and training, developing multi- and interdisciplinary projects. ___ Daniele Lisi Daniele works in both Photography and Digital Media with a special attention to the culture of the Contemporary Image. He also works in publishing for Architecture, Industrial Archaeology and Visual Arts. His research interests include projects on Contemporary Photography with the collective Silverbook Produzioni.