Green light to ideas! Model Your Dream City by SHARING EUROPE, ITALY

This is a Story of the Model your Dream City by Sharing Europe, Italy, this year's winner in the SDG-11 category: Community. 

Never before has it been so important to re-adjust our cities to our current way of life and to rethink them: through Design Thinking and lateral thinking activities, SHARING EUROPE from Italy, designed and created 3D models of some services or areas of our European cities to make them more user-friendly, making analogue and digital dialogue. 

Their coding event was organised for a group of boys and girls, aged 13 to 19, with a keen interest in design, 3D and coding, coming from different cities in Italy. The project was coordinated by a designer and an educator with an interest in codesign and by a 3D artist who suppported the group in the 3D modeling phase.

 The event won the 2021 competition, as it gave its participants the opportunity to make their voice heard, as well as learn about other cities and cultures. The workshop combined the usage of various digital tools and allowed the participants from different cities to collaborate.

If you want to find out more about this fantastic event, below you can read the text of the interview prepared by Cristina D'Apollonio, a lead trainer & designer from SHARING EUROPE with Serena Barilaro, the President of SHARING EUROPE, talking about their event, the Meet and Code experience and how creative ideas are born! 

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     1. Please, introduce your organization in 1-2 sentences.

Cristina D'Apollonio/ Serena Barilaro: Sharing Europe promotes social, cultural and educational development, organizing interdisciplinary exchanges and projects within local, national and European programs, in particular in the fields of education, culture and youth.

      2. Describe your event in 1-2 sentences and tell us what makes it special.

Cristina D'Apollonio/ Serena Barilaro: With our Meet and code Event “Design your ideal City", we wanted to re-project, with boys and girls from all over Italy, our cities for being more livable, lovable, and resilient with DESIGN THINKING, sketches and 3D modeling. The SDG-11 category: Community, was the perfect match between Cristina, a designer, Eduardo, a 3D Artist, and Serena with her addiction to European community. 

      3. Why did you choose to participate in Meet and Code?

Cristina D'Apollonio/ Serena Barilaro: Thanks to meet and code we had the opportunity to know other organizations, to share ideas with them and we were able to carry out this project and make the voices of the boys and girls heard. Youngsters from different cities also had the opportunity to know each others and to become friends despite the distance.

     4. What are the results of the project (preferably in the long-term perspective)? Why is it a success? Is it scalable?

Cristina D'Apollonio/ Serena Barilaro: We think this project is certainly scalable within the school. The teachers who have enrolled their students will in fact continued the work started. The results achieved can be presented to the municipalities and a collaboration can certainly be envisaged to re-propose this project on a specific area by bringing it to schools in order to make the voices of the children heard.   

     5. Give us 1-2 quotes from the participants, if possible.

I had a lot of fun! 

- Khalifa 

Thanks for the opportunity you gave to my students. We will do something similar 
in class so other students can learn about design thinking and 3D.

- Tomas' and Maxim's technology teacher 

Let me know if you will organize something similar again.

- Alessandro's, Giuseppe's, and Francesco’s technology teacher 

I would like to improve and partecipate to other courses with you – Francesco 
It was a beautiful experience it was the first time for me teaching to kids online and 
I'm really satisfied of the results.

- Eduardo, 3D Artist trainer 

    6. What gave you the most joy while working on the project this year? How can you motivate others to participate in the 2022 edition?

 
Cristina D'Apollonio/ Serena Barilaro: It was amazing to partecipate in Meet and Code. We were so happy of the results and we also learned a lot from the partecipants and from this initiative. Don’t miss the opportunity to take part in the big community of Meet and Code, having the possibility to share ideas, projects and enthusiasm with other organization from all over Europe. After the first event last year, we continued our coding courses with the participants, accompanying them in learning. Some have become passionate about coding, becoming real budding programmers! It was a great satisfaction to think that we had contributed to their training.