The schools of the Biella 3 Institute are perhaps the most complex to manage due to their location and heterogeneous users, but hearing Stefania Nuccio, the school director, speak, it seems like she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
What Biella sees from your observatory?
«A city where there is still a lot to do. Clearly the first situation that comes to mind is that of the La Marmora Village. Fortunately, we welcome a varied audience, so we also have the children of parents who choose to send them to these schools precisely because they work with an innovative method, and this pays off. However, the users of the Village are important, for some it is a label, I see it when signing up.”
So is the Village still an entity in its own right?
«Yes and the Biella that I would like is a city where there is no longer a marginalized area, because in fact this has become that neighbourhood. They define it as public housing where people in difficulty, foreigners, are sent. If I were the mayor I would do something else, like rent apartments around Biella to make them move. It would be a more interesting solution: instead of creating an area where problematic people continue to be added, we spread them around Biella, it would be a way to include them. Here, I would like Biella to be more inclusive.”
Isn’t it today?
«I’ll give you an example: when the Active Kids School project is started in primary schools, since we have the Village, no teacher chooses us, we are always the last. There are people who are afraid of approaching certain realities.”
What differentiates the Village from other neighborhoods?
«Interculturality, which I see as a positive value; then obviously there are long-standing families with problems and people remain stuck at that, while we need to go further. We organized a snack at the skate park with all the nursery and primary schools of the Village, it was exciting with incredible collaboration from everyone. It makes me think that we could do something to remove that barrier that isolates the neighborhood.”
What do you do as a school to avoid this?
«Above all and more, we have started a revolution at an educational level, the first year of an experiment with differentiated paths depending on the needs of each student, laboratories have been created where different teaching is activated. Innovativeness and inclusion are my key words, it cannot be the school that sets limits.”
Does the city cooperate?
«Someone is there. A beautiful network has been formed in the area to remove it from this isolation. The objective is to find a physical space that becomes a point of reference, where educators can stay who can follow the children. Professionals who act as a bridge between the school and the neighborhood to prevent kids from wandering around alone and finding less than ideal company. It takes commitment, last year I physically went to pick up those who didn’t come to school from their homes. We are thinking of activating a minibus to pick them up in the morning.”
What reactions do you see?
«It depends, Biella is split in two, there are those who see these things and those who don’t. I’m receiving nice responses, good responds to good, but there’s still a lot of closure. I’m not talking about the administration, it’s a matter of society, individualism reigns supreme.”
So more generally what would you like to change about Biella?
«Some people’s minds, there is a lack of attention for young people, there is a lack of cultural events but then when they are there we don’t go. After Covid, a sort of malice was added, I think that if we were able to work on being a team we would be better.”
Talking about tangible transformations instead?
«Dismantle these isolated areas and then work on them, creating events, finding a way to get everyone to socialize. The climate doesn’t help us in this: it’s cold in the evenings, we lock ourselves in the house. If you’re looking for ice cream at 11pm you won’t find it. We need to make Biella more smiley, I find it a city with a sad face. And then give more value and power to young people, they are our future, let’s ask ourselves why they leave, let’s create reasons why they don’t.”
The population is increasingly older.
«It’s fine to protect and pamper the elderly but by investing in young people, listening to their ideas. Ours is an old Biella with a sad face, but with a lot of potential.”
The first thing you would act on?
«Let’s keep the places more open, encourage the people of Biella to go out, let’s teach the beauty of being together. At a conference an architect said that in Biella there are no squares; It’s not true, there are so many, you just don’t have to stop in the center. The market is also a square that can be brought to life.”
