Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is taking part in the ACRI initiative involving 70 young people between 0 and 18 years old in Turin.

Turin, 1 October With the involvement of 70 boys and girls between the ages of 0 and 18, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is taking part in Non sono un murales – Segni di comunità (I am not a mural – Signs of community), an event promoted by Acri across 140 Italian cities, involving the various communities in creating a work of art.

The works will be inaugurated and “revealed” today to mark the European Day of Foundations. They will all share the same matrix – a stencil portraying an adult tying up a child’s shoe laces, designed by the urban artist LDB (Lorenzo Di Bari) -, but will differ in the way they are created. They will in fact be testimonies of the stories, places and areas where Foundations work every day: supporting the community in caring for their area and its inhabitants.

In the 5 murals it has created, the Turin-based Foundation has focused on projects intended to drive positive change and promote a cohesive community, turning people young and old into protagonists, involving schools and families and taking local opportunities.The aim is to ensure that the educational community is increasingly able to take its responsibility for growth and education, working to remove inequalities, prevent and combat educational poverty and early school leaving.

Four murals have been created across the Barriera di Milano area together with organisations involved in the N. O. E. Nuovi Orizzonti Educativi project, which is intended to support the development of an educational community by offering new out-of-school educational opportunities for families, boys and girls and young people, thanks to the strong synergy between schools, local authorities and the social private sector.

The creation process was supported and preceded by preparatory work led by Depurarte, the initiative’s technical partner and the winning project of the GxG – Giovani per i Giovani call for proposals promoted by the Foundation.The murals have been created at the Gruppo Abele Drop House, a multicultural reception, socialising, listening and training centre for Italian and foreign women, with or without children, IC Ilaria Alpi – Scuola Deledda, located between the districts of Aurora and Barriera di Milano and involved in combating educational inequalities, and Oratorio Maria Regina della Pace which has been working in the area for many years to to promote education for the people living in the neighbourhood with many activities, focusing in particular on supporting schools with after-school activities for children and young people from primary to secondary school. The works have been sprayed with a special photocatalytic film that captures air pollution and transforms it into inert substances.

A further mural, designed by the writer Sei venuto male with the Vides Main association, has been created with Fondazione Ufficio Pio and the Un sogno per tutti social cooperative at the entrance to the Padre Gemelli school as part of the Will – Educare al futuro project cofunded by the social enterprise Con i Bambini and Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo to support the education and training of students from low income families from the end of primary school to the start of secondary school. The inauguration of the murals coincides with the launch of the Will Torino 2021 call for proposals, which is open to families living in the city’s 5th and 6th constituencies with children attending the last year of primary school.