"Talking Hands was born on the same day that these hundreds of guests moved this former barracks, which is now state property, in order to be finally visible to the city. We know very well that the architectural typology of the barracks avoids rather than facilitates exchange with the outside world. So, these people left the barracks and occupied Piazza dei Signori, the very centre of the city, from where the main shopping streets start. Several hundred young people occupied this square. And from this mobilisation, word of mouth was immediately activated in the local network of cultural and social centres in support of this mobilisation.Interestingly, the methods of the temporary occupation of the square were very specific and unprecedented: these young people redefined the space of the square by installing a series of circular groups distributed in a ring, as the initiator of the project and art director Fabrizio Urettini says.In the largest ring, which served as the space and main body of the mobilization, a committee were established. It was responsible for bringing these people's requests to the prefect and the local authorities. Urettini was impressed by the shape of these installations which formed their own temporary government space: a circular open-air assembly, which entirely occupied the square. They actually restored the original function of the square in the city, that of the space of dialogue and of negotiation over decades of a merely decorative function compared to the centrality of consumerism, which has transformed urban centers into spaces mostly used for shopping. After some moments of tension with the local police, this delegation was received by the prefect. In the meantime, the project Talking Hands was birthing as a way to continue the dialogue and the exchange information between these young people, Urettini and the activists of a social and cultural center in Treviso, then the rooms of an old barracks started becoming a space for inclusive and participatory planning called “Centro Sociale Django” ( trad.Django Social Center).Talking Hands' core group is made up of 15 people who run the workshops, as well as around 50 people who temporarily reside in the space. As reported by Urettini, when they arrived, most of them were accommodated in reception centres in former barracks, and despite the decrease in arrivals following the 2017 agreements between Italy and Libya (over 600,000 arrivals between 2014 and 2017, just over 23,000 in 2018), the situation of the Italian reception centres was and still remains critical (Urettini, Mc Carthy, 2020). Talking Hands project has been developed by asking a question, apparently banal, but of fundamental importance for very energetic and creative people aged 18 and 24-25, who find themselves in a situation of almost imprisonment.When asked ""what do you want to do when you grow up, what do you know how to do and what are your ambitions and desires"". An extremely rich and varied picture of knowledge and ambitions emerged, from metalworking to embroidery to carpentry. In some cases these were rudiments of the trade, in other cases real experiences gained during the crossing from the countries of origin to Italy, often to be able to afford the next stage of the journey to Europe. Contrary to our way of traveling, these are crossings that could even last years, because you have to pay for all the stages of the journey, paying on departure is often not enough. Others, however, were experts in the trade and had in-depth knowledge of it, particularly in the field of carpentry. From there the idea was born of creating a space that could enhance these skills and knowledge at the same time as giving them an opportunity to escape from that isolation by expressing and producing objects thanks to their creative energy. Professional figures such as designers have been paired with these kids. Figures obviously capable of responding to certain needs and requirements and who related to the work group. These figures have activated training courses, halfway between training and laboratory activity, already capable of determining some product lines. The curator was therefore more inspired by the theory of design than by that of art, effectively assuming the role of art director, not understood as someone who entrusts the mere execution of his idea to other people, but as a directorial idea as expressed by EisensteinWhen asked ""what do you want to do when you grow up, what do you know how to do and what are your ambitions and desires?” An extremely rich and varied picture of skills and ambitions emerged, from metalworking to embroidery to carpentry. In some cases, these were the rudiments of the trade, in others they were real experiences gained during the crossing from their countries of origin to Italy, often in order to be able to afford the next stage of the journey to Europe. Contrary to our way of travelling, these were crossings that could last for years, because you had to pay for all the stages of the journey, and paying on departure was often not enough. Others, however, were experts in the trade and had in-depth knowledge, particularly in the field of carpentry. This gave rise to the idea of creating a space in which these skills and knowledge could be developed, while, at the same time, giving them the opportunity to break out of their isolation by expressing their creative energy and producing objects. Professional figures such as designers were paired with these children. Figures who were obviously able to respond to certain needs and requirements and who were related to the working group. These characters have activated training courses, halfway between training and laboratory activity, already able to define some product lines. In fact, Urettini was thus inspired more by the theory of design than by that of art, which identifies different subjects, skills and levels of training, and then insert them into a production model. This model, is obviously capable of not diminishing the less professional skills but it connects them and integrates them into the production mechanism as a single supply chain. At the beginning, there were very few materials available. Moreover, in the former barracks where the community centre still stands, which had been a municipal warehouse for about a decade, a few hundred of the wooden boxes that had once been used for elections had been abandoned. Basically, they were old ballot boxes that the group used to create the first collection of houses or the first design project called ""Rìfugiati” (in Italian the word means both “take shelter” and “refugees”), symbolically composed of containers used for the national elections, allowing politicians to exercise their function as representatives of the citizens.A space was then chosen to house the laboratory, which the Talking Hands core group has cleaned and renovated together to adapt it to its new life and function. Therefore, from the very beginning of the project, it was necessary to take possession of a space in order to feel it as one's own, as a home and a place of belonging. Once the space was prepared, it was time for a demonstration of trust, as risky as this operation might seem: the first gesture was to hand over the keys to the space to the working group, because, as Urettini well explains, it was the only viable way for them to feel at home and enjoy the personal dimension of life that they had been deprived of in the reception centres, of which nobody really knows what happens inside, as they are managed by private companies. It was used not only by young people who had permanent jobs, but also by those who simply wanted and needed to socialise, recharge their mobile phones or find something to eat, which reinforced and strengthened the sense of community that was created in the studio.After this phase of building social relations and the working group with the new space, which lasted about a year. So, the idea was precisely to create methods and perhaps even models for managing the activities and laboratories of direct democracy, based on the right to assemble, to decide together, for example, to organise these working groups. This type of process allows you to share when you make the right decisions and when you make the wrong decisions, and the discussion that follows is a truly collective type of discussion that brings other collective solutions. It's no longer the individual who makes a wrong decision, but a collective body. This also allows us to protect and strengthen the project in the absence of its own financial support, where it is precisely the acceptance of risk that makes the difference, and the shared preparation not to suffer but to manage the consequences. In fact, this was one of the most powerful and founding phases also from a creative point of view. Every day was characterized by a new idea, a prototyping or an invention. There was also the euphoria of finally being together in a space that allowed them to leave the reception centers and also build a social network that went beyond the dimension of the center. Obviously, these were non-linear creative paths but from this first phase they gave very interesting artistic results.In fact, this first collection of children's houses is entitled ""Rìfugiati”, which they created with a professional designer Matteo Zorzenoni, already presented in an independent design market in Christmas 2016, therefore two or three months after the opening of the laboratory, to which This was followed in 2019 by the exhibition of a collection of coats and armchairs at the prestigious Salone del Mobile in Milan.
It was a collection of domestic micro-architectures for children, expressing visions and needs for refuge and comfort zones. Immediately afterwards the project was published in the main sector magazines, including Elle Decor, a large one from the newspaper Il manifesto, thus contributing to the birth of the Talking Hands phenomenon and of very high expectations that had to be maintained and if anything relaunched, as Urettini underlines.
Veneto, the administrative region of Treviso, like the rest of the Italian North East, is known for its industrial vocation, it is a region that from a place of emigration has become a rich region where wealth is produced, precisely by promoting an artisanal industrial model. It is a family-run industrial model that will later become the famous economic locomotive of the Northeast. It is a phenomenon born in the second half of the 1970s, especially with the textile and clothing sector, which outsources production to small laboratories and subcontractors, effectively distributing it throughout the regional territory. For this reason, one of the most famous phrases that described this process, also as a social and cultural process, was ""a shed for every bell tower"", also giving the regional industry a civic and religious value at the same time. This has meant that not only a culture but also a religion of work and the sacrifice of work was created, which has its roots in a long Catholic tradition that is very present and profound in the Veneto region. For this reason, the asylum seekers who make up the Talking Heads working group were immediately distinguished by local people from the rest of the asylum seekers as ""those who work"", having shown from the beginning of the project the products created and produced by them, effectively changing their status if not in formal terms but in social cultural terms.The next step was to intercept industrial suppliers of materials who would then form the atelier's network. It was mostly waste from textiles, wood and other materials that were greatly needed in the atelier at the time. Since then, the collective has built a long-lasting relationship of trust with many of them, such as for example with the Lanificio Paoletti mill, which has been supplying them since 2017 and which recently presented its supply chain at the BIFTI in China. In particular this wool mill, based in Follina in the Belluno Prealps where in the Middle Ages Benedictine monks settled who created a complex system of water infrastructures which then allowed the great industrial development of the Veneto wool industry, also thanks to the geographical position characterized by slopes frequented by shepherds who came down before the Transhumance, for the shearing which took place on the days of Pentecost. A tradition that the Lanificio has continued to maintain through the organization of a festival entitled “The wool route"". which is held in the factory. It is an industrial archeology structure, where international artists who work with the fabric are invited to reinvent the work space which becomes an exhibition, experimentation and meeting space, of which the Talking Heads collective was also part.Installed in the area since 1795, like many Italian textile industries, it entered into crisis with the introduction of synthetic fabrics into the market in the 1950s, and was mainly remodeled in the national and international luxury market. In fact, they take scraps, even very large ones, of materials that have a very high research content and which are then regenerated through the Talking Hands collections. Luckily there was in the same period. A notable increase in collective awareness of the importance of recycling and sustainable development both in fashion and in other supply chains that the collective had activated to obtain what cannot even be defined as waste due to their quality but as surplus materials, which in any case the companies had to dismiss. "
The excellence of the project rightly lies in the way in which the collective has turned design thinking into an effective tool for the aesthetic reinvention of the asylum-seeker condition, through products of high artistic and manufacturing quality. At the same time, they turned it also into an efficient tool for the creation of solidarity networks, which, as Urettini himself explains, are not only made up of social services, but also and above all of a series of partnerships with companies that are attentive to the territory and have an ethical approach to the supply chain. Among the partners who supply regularly redundant textile materials and patterns, there is the famous Lanificio Paoletti wool factory. Opened since the 18th century, it works with “haute couture” and uses the wool of the Alpago sheep, long considered waste because of its coarse texture/fibre, which is now recovered without the use of chemical dyes. Other well-known factories are involved, such as Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, in Venice, which uses looms from the 15th century. The aim of the project, which has been fully achieved, is to find a way of overcoming the stereotype of welfare that a blind political vision attributes to asylum seekers as well as to the less well-off, to affirm and demonstrate the ability of these young designers to self-organise and self-determine as sources of knowledge, as a great opportunity also for the host country (especially for Italy, which is characterised by a dramatic demographic collapse) to be truly designers rather than just asylum seekers.
Talking Hands' core group is made up of 15 people who run the workshops, as well as around 50 people who temporarily reside in the space. As reported by Urettini, when they arrived, most of them were accommodated in reception centres in former barracks, and despite the decrease in arrivals following the 2017 agreements between Italy and Libya (over 600,000 arrivals between 2014 and 2017, just over 23,000 in 2018), the situation of the Italian reception centres was and still remains critical (Urettini, Mc Carthy, 2020). Talking Hands project has been developed by asking a question, apparently banal, but of fundamental importance for very energetic and creative people aged 18 and 24-25, who find themselves in a situation of almost imprisonment.
