My name is Mattia Ferretti and I was born in Reggio Emilia. I am 25 years old and I studied architecture in an art school. Once I finished studying, I immediately started working, doing a bit of everything: from being a warehouse worker to other jobs. I then managed to do what I really liked: design and architecture. Since high school I was interested in architecture, but in general I liked to think of something creative that was related to people. In the end, if you think about it, architecture deals with the spaces where people live. By the way, also during high school, I had started painting in the street: I was doing graffiti.
How to start
Well, there are so many different ways to get into painting. I think you do it out of necessity, or at least that was the case for me. I perceive it as a need to surpass boundaries, to express oneself and then it also remains an act of rebellion, and this is the reason why the majority of people embark on their artistic journeys during adolescence. Although there are some who start later, often when they already have a job, it may be precisely because the demands of their current job disillusion them and they need to escape from reality. So there you go, maybe you start more out of an inner need. This leads you to look for something new, even if paradoxically very old, because it has been present for years in all cities, even if it is somewhat hidden.
You start out of a need for expression and maybe even rebellion, sometimes in an unreasoned, impulsive manner. But then you grow up, you understand that in life there must be something else. You are no longer a student who comes home and in most cases finds everything ready. Gradually the problems and chores to think about start to accumulate, alongside the emergence of new needs. One becomes, quite simply, an adult.
I chose to come to Amsterdam with a specific purpose : to put myself on the line, to challenge myself. I wanted to try to make it on my own and at the same time not lose my creative impulse. My ultimate goal persists: to integrate urban art into my creative endeavors. I realised that the element I like best about urban regeneration is its relationship with the social, with cultural events, with human contact.
Urban regeneration
Urban regeneration means everything and nothing. For example, I don’t perceive it as urban regeneration when a rundown neighborhood is momentarily highlighted by commissioning a street artist to paint a mural on a prominent building, generating a brief buzz in the newspapers. To clarify, while some may consider this as urban regeneration, I do not.Haut du formulaire Urban regeneration means combining art with functionality. It is fundamental. If a building is abandoned, you have to put it back, and that is what is meant, in fact, by the term “regeneration”; but then you have to convert that space into something useful. The term “urban” captivates me because it indicates the dynamic interplay between architecture and humanity, highlighting the importance of placing social consideration at the forefront of regeneration efforts. It must mean a change in the place where you live every day. It is a process of extreme applied democracy because it is not a project that comes down from above and that is how it is and everyone has to adapt, but there must necessarily be a confrontation with the local civil society. Then of course you need funds and people who make decisions, people who have the right skills. In any case, the confrontation with the citizens is fundamental, because there are urban regeneration projects where the people who live there don’t give a damn. They have other needs and the risk is to do failed projects. Despite efforts to restore them, these places often revert to abandonment within five years as they fail to attract sustained usage.
In Italy
In Italy, rather than talking about the issue of urban regeneration, one should talk about the need to carry out a process of land re-appropriation. What does this mean? In Italy we often have to deal with a stagnant territory, where you really struggle to put ideas into practice. Perhaps the ideas fail to flourish, but how could we ever know if we are not given the chance to try? No, it never happens, it all remains stagnant. The concept of urban regeneration clashes with this pond, with its own territory that does not allow the possibility of regeneration. As we have said, this is a process that needs the involvement on so many levels even of people who know nothing about it, but who may be the ones who will live that space every day. Moreover, Italy needs to recognize the imperative of evolution. It must change for the better to offer new possibilities to new generations. Nor is it correct to generalise. When I think about it, I say “Italy”, but I am actually speaking of my experience within and around my region: a little bit of Emilia, a little bit of Romagna, a little bit of Tuscany, areas I cherish dearly and understand intimately. Although for now I have decided to gain experience abroad, it is there that I would like to return one day. I say “I hope” because while dreaming is permissible, residing in a locale where dreams can be actualized is preferable. I would like to return thinking that I will find fertile ground and then move on. Now we are still at the stagnant level of the ground, therefore still, immobile. Take Amsterdam as an esample; it stands as a distinct entity within the broader landscape of the Netherlands: here I realised that things can objectively be proposed, changed. One of the reasons why this is possible is precisely because there are so many young people. It doesn’t matter, whether these are labourers or other specialised jobs. The point is that they are young- individuals who, despite any initial lack of knowledge, actively engage in the pursuit of understanding and endeavor to grasp new concepts.There is a more vital energy, more people who are in the same phase of life and want to understand, to experiment. In Italy, this energy does not exist because we are objectively few: our population is older and this is an objective thing.
The second big difference factor here in Amsterdam is the possibility to experiment: here I have seen that young people can dare more and potentially make more mistakes, even in simple things. I will provide a practical example from my own experience. I have been living here for two years and I am already organising an event, we are trying to do collaborations among cultural spaces on a European level. There has already been an event and tomorrow there will be another one, which is about independent films, then there will be another one in June and another European event in September. These people did not know me, but you know what happens here? I went there and explained my idea. They said it was OK and they provided me with an opportunity to demonstrate my capabilities. Then the event went well and they encouraged me to keep going: “Now help us to organise another event”. In Italy, unfortunately, I encountered closed doors even in social centers, and sometimes elsewhere as well. I remember that when I was sixteen we had made a school group that dealt with hip hop: some contributed by creating musical beats, others by rapping, and some by drawing. We said to ourselves: “Let’s try to reach out to the municipality to inquire whether they could provide us with a space”. Maybe we did not really know how things worked, however I vividly remember the answer we received: we had to take care of it, that is, we had to pay for a space from a private party when we were sixteen. The municipality had a lot of space but they only looked at the present cost of things, they did not think that that cost could be funding. And to be honest, from that small group, I’d estimate about half ended up in the streets, engaging in who knows what, while others settled for labor jobs, their dreams abandoned. Naturally, such circumstances can lead to a crisis.
Finally, there is one more difference: here in Amsterdam I also do another job, which allows me to make a living, but I still have the time and the possibility to do what I like and therefore to work slowly, day by day, on a future that can give me satisfaction, where I can then live off my passion. This is a difference that may seem subtle, but it makes the real difference.
Things can change
Things can change, and to do that you have to start little by little, even if it’s just the re-appropriation of those two square metres, and then expand. As much as there are always reasons to complain, there is a lot of excitement about these things in Italy lately. Let’s take my story as an example. I had done a project for the Emilia-Romagna Region and Invitalia for a hypothetical start-up that would have scanned and redeveloped abandoned spaces throughout Italy. It would not only have allowed us to know what the spaces were but it would have helped create models and systems that would have given the real possibility of putting them in place. There are already lists of abandoned spaces, but the problem, until now, has been how to put them in place and how to develop skills. At the time, the proposal had failed, because I had received positive feedback on the project but also a great demand: I had to apply to Invitalia for funding. So to give you a picture of the situation: I was 20 years old, I had no money to spare because in previous years I had first worked as a warehouse worker and then as a designer in a studio, it was obvious that I could not afford to take on a debt with the bank to open a company. Moreover, it was my first experience in the industry, I didn’t know anything about it yet. So, at the time, the project stopped there. Then I moved to Amsterdam and started my life there. In the meantime, however, other architects and cultural workers had created something similar in Italy. Not only that, they are still doing very well, creating a national network. So, during a course, we met and they introduced me to their network. Together we are working to carry out that project I had conceived: to scan the territory, with the aim of then redeveloping it. What is the moral of this grande storiella? At the end of the day, if one has the will and makes the effort, even on one’s own, one will always find someone else who is pursuing that same idea, perhaps from another part of the country or the world. By making sometimes very great efforts, one can find common ground and build something together. In my opinion things can change, I am very hopeful. A few Saturdays ago I did an event in Reggio Emilia at the former Reggiana workshop, a huge abandoned space. We were expecting about twenty people, three times as many came. This project had started by chatting with a friend, between one graffito and another on the goods trains, and now we are a group of people made up of architects, girls who work for us in marketing and communication, to realise this project. Everyone with their own skills is doing their own thing. So things happen, maybe it will take time, but if one believes and works hard, things can change, I am very hopeful. I hope my peers, even younger ones, feel the same way. I hope they have the strength to work hard to change things. Leave your phone at home and go out: see the city a bit, question what you see, imagine how you would like it to be.
Grandi Storielle 🖌📚 