The Happy Project: An Ideological Narrative

Paolo Gurisatti,
INSITE Workshop WP 7 - Generalized ICT: how cities and museums augment human learning, individually and collectively
Modena - Italy, 12th and 14th-15thApril 2014

1. The Happy Project: An Ideological Narrative
2. • Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
3. • “All happy local development projects are alike. Each unhappy project is unhappy in its own way.” • Local development projects refer to good practices, ideal stories, which deeply influence the team leader’s (designer’s) behaviour
10. • Small businesses in the Alto Vicentino district aim to accredit themselves as a world class manufacturing problem solving system • New tools for project management (co- working techniques, 3D printers, Fab-Lab) can make it real
11. • Leather manufacturers in the Chiampo Valley aim to overcome environmental problems and transform the territory from a dump to a mine • New techniques of protein extraction, from beamhouse sewage (the mine) can make it real
12. • Citizens living in the Berici Hills (central park in the Venetian sprawling metropolis) aim to create a new constituency: the “City of Silence” (a residential and touristic site) • A common framework for investments (a green community rating system) can make it real
13. A Narrative Theory of Action reverses the linear innovation process
14. • The key characters of a local development project are identified by specific attributions and perform coherently with a unique “narrative structure” • Local development agents must identify a coherent narrative structure, if they want to anticipate deviations from the ideal story
15. Local development policies emerge not by referring to a selected number of best practices (model) but by designing a storyboard referring to characters’ attributions and dynamic evaluation tools
16. ECLT (European Centre for Living Technology) aims to design an Identity Based Local Development Policy