Partner: Defence for Children Italia –
Sector: Social inclusion –
Country: Italy –
Place: Genoa and Pontremoli (MC) –
Year: 2024, 2025, 2026 –
Project Status: Ongoing –
Type: AMI
THE PROJECT IN SUMMARY
Rap narrative and writing workshop for youths involved in measures connected with external penal provisions in Genoa, and youths detained at the Istituto Penitenziario Minorile IPM femminile (female juvenile detention facility) in Pontremoli (MC).
THE PROJECT IN DETAIL
Objectives
Promote the participation of young men and women involved with the justice system or at risk of marginalization, reinforcing knowledge in terms of their rights and favoring useful considerations about their own experience.
Spreading the voice of these youths, giving value to their artistic productions;
Promoting youthful protagonism through connections with the territory and civil society.
Beneficiairies
Approximately 30 youths involved in measures connected with external penal provisions entrusted to the Genoa USSM, foreign unaccompanied minors from the CPIA Centro Levante in Vico Vegetti in Genoa, young women detained at the IPM female facility in Pontremoli.
Activities
The project proposes a creative pathway for youths involved in penal measures based on narrative via the creation of rap lyrics, a method that can prove to be fundamental for understanding and re-elaborating one’s own story. Expressing oneself can provide the possibility to understand one’s situation and gain knowledge that can facilitate the construction of a personal life project, putting into practice coherent and sustainable choices. Music and narrative become instruments of communication about the events and prospects of the young men and women, instruments that help them consider the aspects and contexts which have led them to their run-in with justice, those things that can be improved about the current experience and that which can help or hinder positive integration into society.
The project foresees the realization of two workshops, one at the Defence for Children center in Piazza Don Gallo and the other at the Pontremoli juvenile detention facility, with activities involving: information about reference points based on rights, using techniques like brainstorming, play, role-play and conversational circles; narration, inviting thought and reflection about one’s own experience; writing, providing technical guidance aimed at helping them put their thoughts into stanzas or songs; listening, in order to analyze technical elements but also the content of different pieces; recording of the pieces created. Along with this, in 2026 a videoclip on the workshop will be created, recounting through the voices of the participants the power of music as an instrument for redemption and participation. The two workshops will meet to create one creative pathway: the young women in the IPM, flanked by a visual artist, will listen to the pieces composed by the youths participating in the Genoa Rap Lab and, using the music as inspiration, will draw original illustrations that will be used as covers for the EP and the collective album of the rap workshop of Genoa, giving life to a choral work that brings together youths inside and outside of prison.
