✅Milan FCH Journey
Vision, Community(ies) and the physical and digital Infrastructure(s) of the Milan FCH
Milan Fab City Hub Vision
The Milan team envisioned their local FCH initiative as a collaborative network bringing together local artisans, SMEs, and makers to promote open innovation, cultivate a productive and technological culture, and create inclusive and sustainable services for businesses and citizens . This initiative initially focused on the Tortona area with BASE Milano as a key industrial building invested in by the project. However, events were organized across the city to engage in city-wide strategies for circular production in Milan.
To realize this vision, the local team throughout their journey mapped key actors and sought ways to engage with key stakeholders for future partnerships. This foundational steps aimed to establish and nurture a solid core community to co-design needs, services, and fundamental aspects of the network.
A key aspect of this vision was to conceptualize the FCH Milan as a learning ecosystem, designing actions and programs to gather different actors to exchange and acquire knowledge on circular practices. Vocational training programs like Percorsi Urbani Circolari played a crucial role in providing the skill set required for small companies to adopt circular practices at the urban level. The success of this program highlighted additional skill development needs, leading to the scheduling of new events to reinforce the idea of FCH as a learning ecosystem.
Over the three years, the following learning activities were promoted:
Creation of an ongoing skill exploitation program to sustain the FCH Initiative beyond the project's conclusion.
Collaboration with a fashion and design school for a special program of learning sessions, including participation in the Milano Circolare event in February '23.
Invitation to activate a summer school for students focusing on teaching skills for repair, aligning with the goals of circularity and sustainability.
Milan Fan City Hub Community
Establishing a vibrant and engaged community was a primary focus for the local team. To build this community, they launched a call for circular projects and local businesses to participate in the FAB CITY CAMP event on June 23, 2021. This first event aimed to increase visibility and foster connections among future memeber of this community including artisans, SMEs, and makers involved and interested in circular and sustainable practices. It initiated a collaborative process to identify needs and explore potential opportunities for circular designers and producers. Following this event, two working groups were formed and held regular meetings to develop services and address the needs specific to their local Fab City Hub model.
An essential tool in nurturing and strengthening the newly formed FCH Community was the online platform MANIFATTURA MILANO. This platform provided a virtual space to facilitate continuous engagement of members throughout the three-year project duration while also disseminate activities across the city.
Nearly two years later after the first event, in February 2023, the organization of another major event, Milano Circolare, marked a significant milestone in solidifying the growing FCH Community and served as a starting point for drafting an action plan on circular economy initiatives for the entire city. The event, entirely co-designed with proposals coming from community members (including exhibitions, demonstrations, talks, and workshops), highlighted the Fab City Hub's ability to facilitate community action and unify stakeholders around a common vision.
Milan Fab City Hub Infrastructure
From the outset of the experimentation process, the local team recognized the crucial role FCH Initiative should play in facilitate access to spaces for circular actors such as makers, designers, and SMEs within the city. Innovative spaces serve as beacons for these communities, ensuring their visibility and facilitating access to various spaces where they can exchange ideas, learn, and collaborate on projects to advance circular and sustainable practices locally. A truly circular city must keep these innovators visible and active within the urban landscape, revitalizing underutilized areas as laboratories for social and economic innovation.
To realize this vision, key events such as the FCH Camp , the Milano Circolare and the Design Week residencies program were hosted at Base throughout the project duration. Base, a former electromechanical factory and urban manufacturing center, serves as the primary venue for hosting key events of the Milan FCH community, fostering regular gatherings and establishing itself as a recognized and expanding network hub.
However, to fulfill their vision of creating a distributed network of actors and ensuring presence and actions across different neighborhoods, the team organized events and initiatives aimed at connecting spaces, actors, and knowledge on a citywide scale. A successful Fab City Hub initiative should not focus solely on one location but rather facilitate the activation of spaces and actors across the entire urban ecosystem.
During events such as the Fab City Residency in 2022, organized during CENTRINNO, two international artists explored the concept of creating circular economies at neighbourhood level using waste and stock leftovers from nearby companies. This initiative, centered on textile products, engaged international designers, urban tailoring studios, hotels, fabric producers, and representatives from Milanese associations to collaboratively create a circular tote bag as one of the initial distributed circular products under the meta-brand Manifattura Circolare. This experience illustrated how sustainable production in the city is achievable through unique collaborations and the involvement of diverse spaces and actors.
Additionally, the creation of a digital platform as the primary virtual hub for a larger and distributed community aimed to showcase the variety of spaces across Milan supporting the FCH vision while also engaging interested actors in co-designing a possible spatial model for the Milan FCH. This initiative was crucial for a city like Milan, facing challenges in providing affordable spaces for creatives, makers, and innovators. Subsequent site visits and engagements with various locations in major Milan neighborhoods furthered the understanding of connections between past manufacturing practices, present innovations, and future circularity goals.
What's next ?
The Milan Team today envisions the advancement of their FCH initiative through the establishment of a collaborative governance structure involving both public actors, the Municipality, and the private entity Rete Nema, both part of Milan Pilot team in CENTRINNO. In this setup, Nema would play a pivotal role in representing the needs of a consolidated FCH community. Their responsibility would be to guide the overall vision concerning circular production and influence the decision-making processes related to this topic in respect to the Municipality that will have the role of framing guidelines, funding opportunities, and monitoring progress for the enhancement of a circular city.
City Size: | Large with 1.378.689 inhabitants |
Productive Focus: | Fashion, Design |
Main Partners involved: | Comune di Milano, Manifattura digitale in ex-Ansaldo rete di imprese - NEMA (Cariplo Factory, Make a Cube, BASE Milano, Opendot, Wemake) |
FCH address: | The Milano team has not indicate an official physical address for their FCH. The most powerful manifestation of their FCH model is the platform they have created - Manifattura Milano- which is the expression of their Community. Nevertheless, the majority of activities are organised at BASE Milano. In the last month of the CENTRINNO project, Base make available for the FCH Community a room called " yes room" a space specifically dedicated to them. |
FCH online channel: |
The Milan Blueprint 👇 :
Discover a visual document detailing Milan's journey towards establishing their FCH Initiative. You will visualise their micro-missions, the practical tools they've developed, and few inspiring policy recommendations for regenerative urban models. The objective of this document is to facilitate dissemination and replicability of Milan best practices in setting up a FCH Initiative.
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