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Sferruzzare sociale: a close knit community

I am the kind of person that tries thousands of different hobbies but never follows through on any of them. Crocheting hits me differently: the gesture, the manual skills involved, the fact that you can do other activities while crocheting, and finally, the idea of creating something real, useful, with your own body, led crochet to be one of the hobbies I still follow today.

Each one, part of a whole

An illustration by @toomanyrinas we received for an upcoming article that we thought deserved it's own post!

Between Fire and Flowers

As a student living in Italy and doing my Master’s degree, watching the protests back home feels like holding both pride and heartbreak at the same time. Pride, because our generation finally stood up, raised their voices, and refused to stay silent. We were never meant to shut our mouths. We were born in a democracy, and we have every right to protect it. But with that pride comes a deep sadness. Because in this movement, Some families lost their sons, daughters, and loved ones. That is the heaviest part to carry. From far away, I feel proud of the courage in Nepal’s streets, but I also feel the pain of seeing my country break down piece by piece. It hurts to see how fragile everything has become, how much we are losing, and how far we still need to go. Still, I believe in us. I believe in the youth who protested. I believe in the families who keep surviving. And I believe that even from abroad, we carry the responsibility to rebuild our nation slowly, honestly, and together. This moment is both fire and flowers - courage and loss, hope and heartbreak.

Poesía, identidad y desarrollo

“Poesía en la Austral” is a cultural and social association born in the austral (south) area of Chile, specifically in the so-called Los Lagos Region. In this article, I invite you to discover their actions, their goals, and how they mix poetry, identity, and, finally, development. I interviewed Javiera Arce, one of the association's active members of “Poesía en la Austral” who kindly agreed to share her story with us and with Pedro Aldunate, its president, who told me more about the association itself.

Cut to Modern Style - Indonesian Traditional Cloth Preservation

While pop culture is arising in Indonesia, some traditions are starting to fade, one of which is the way of dressing. Many traditional clothes are slowly being abandoned, and this is becoming seen as, for some, a threat to the Indonesian nation. This is exacerbated by the interest shown by other nations in Indonesia's traditional textile heritage, with some even claiming iconic Indonesian clothes, such as batik, as part of their own cultural legacy.

Break the Stereotypes

Hello there! 🌈 This is Fosca from Italy and Annisa from Indonesia 👩🏾‍🦱🧕🏽

Berbeda Tapi Tetap Satu

Hello! ✨This is Fosca from Venice, and Annisa from Jakarta ✨ We are students in Local Development at The University of Padova. Welcome to our article. Be ready! Because we are going to take you on a cuisine tour across the globe 🌏

Walking the street far away from a homeland

The banner ‘Just for surviving, is that too much?’ that we held / Photo by author

Mutualità Studentesca: an (ant)i-capitalist cooperative at the University of Florence

To better understand what I am going to talk about, it is important to have some historical context: in late 2019, some students, coming from different student associations of the Università degli Studi di Firenze, started to meet each other to respond to important issues that students asked about, but that student associations could not solve.

Milano I love you, Milano I Hate You

This is a small text I wrote on the way back from the centre of Milan to my home in the southern suburbs of Milan, Rozzano. From the Duomo and the University, which is the beating heart of the city, those who are from Rozzano to go to the city take the tram 15 which is the historic and identity tram of the neighbourhood. I think the creativity with which we share a message or a text has no limits. However, it is a text I particularly care about written as I watched all the people getting on and off the streetcar. People who were slowly changing, their appearance, their voices, their nationalities...

Co-creation and inclusive architecture in East Slovakia

Amongst historic streets and concrete towers, in the summer of 2023, the feminist urban collective Spolka organised a week-long project in Košice, East Slovakia. The Never Never School brought together a multidisciplinary group of architects, sociologists, students, urban designers, organisers, teachers, writers, artists, and people passionate about housing - we explored the city, engaged with the area, and imagined future possibilities for an inclusive housing. This interview with one of their members, Lýdia Grešáková, explores the unique territorial and cultural aspects that influence their work, like the exclusion of the segregated Roma minority, Lunik IX - the Roma settlement at the edge of the city - and a socio-political environment unfriendly to change.

My Body

Our latest instalment continues our art and illustration series, with Greta’s interpretation “My Body.”

Unearthing the Truth: The Impact of Land Grabbing on Communities in Ghana

In Ghana, land grabbing has become a major problem that has sparked discussions and raised concerns about the significant effects it has on local communities all around the country. This phenomenon, involving the large-scale acquisition of agricultural land by foreign governments, multinational corporations, and private investors, is causing deep repercussions on the livelihoods, cultural legacy, and fundamental rights of thousands of Ghanaians.

Breaking Ground

“It’s not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land” - R.W. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

The uncomfortable, constant, and necessary work of decolonization

Imagine sitting down for a cup of tea with an artist, while she unravels her life’s stories and discusses reshaping our understanding of history, through a rich blend of artistic expressions. This is the captivating experience that "Things I Found Nelle Viscere" by Camilla Pontiggia has offered to us last June, at the Museum of Geography in Padua, followed by a discussion with the audience, moderated by Prof. Mariasole Pepa, from University of Padua. The exhibition weaved together stories and visceral feelings experienced in the immigration between two continents, Africa and Europe, delving into deep places of memory and lived experiences. The title hints at Camilla's belief that embracing the visceral and uncomfortable sensations that the exhibition provokes can be a powerful decolonial and political act.

exotic terrestrial

I would always find it unsettling whenever someone would describe me as "exotic." But I would just laugh it off and blame it on a lack of creativity. However, I finally got what the word meant when I myself had a brush with the "exotic," in a cold, mostly blonde, predominantly white country in Northern Europe.

To End Up Like Venice

"We don’t want to end up like Venice!" declares a determined, mustachoied gentleman during a television debate on mass tourism affecting Italian cities. This magic formula is often used to immediately convey the potential catastrophic consequences of continuing to prioritize tourism, which has always been touted as the saviour and driving force for Italy's shaky economy. But what does the end of Venice mean? What has become of Venice? The thought of this resignation irritates me, and I turn off the television.

Plenty of Homes

Some days ago I saw the profile of my English teacher, Prof. Ana Bessa Carvalho, who I had the pleasure to have as a professor and friend. She posted a frame of a book in which this sentence was written. Finding a house in this precarious word that leaves us homeless if we are not as productive as they want us to be is very difficult, and finding a home is difficult too. But maybe it is easier, because we can find at home in the company of another person and in the company of ourselves

There is no fortune cookie in China

American talk show actor Trevor Noah once said that he thought fortune cookies were made in the kitchen by an Asian chef who knew fortune telling. However, when he came to Beijing, he discovered that there was no such thing in China!

Homes for People

Take responsibility for your home, take control of your space, take care of your home

Fighting Menstrual Stigma

According to the World Bank, on every given day around 300 million women are menstruating, and approximately 500 million people do not have access to menstrual products or suitable facilities for menstrual hygiene management.

All the Homes

My home is a beautiful place, it is surrounded by tall green trees, it has hundreds little paths, and thousands of people have walked them before me. My home is a horrible place, it is surrounded by tall cold walls, it has hundreds of long arms, and it wants to catch thousands of us.

Building Tenant Power

With rent increases vastly outstripping wages, renters across the world are organising into unions to defend their rights from profit-seeking landlords, and to fight for legal protections. Iniciativa nájemníků a nájemnic, or Tenant’s Initiative, is one such union, formed in the Czech Republic to bring social and institutional change to the post-socialist housing market. We talked to one of the founders, Yuliya Moskvina, about the housing conditions in the Czech Republic, how to organise for social power, and the hopes for building alternative structures to neoliberal capitalism.

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To see more of Rina's work, follow her on Instagram at @toomanyrinas

This Cinema Must Not Close!

The Super movie theatre is the last cinema left in Valdagno.