A Creative “Nanotown”

During a two-year research programme from 2016 to 2018, scholars and students from diferent disciplinary backgrounds engaged with the local community of the town of Gagliato in Calabria, Italy, to co-produce future scenarios of local development. The aim was to enable a transition towards sustainability for a town afected by economic and demographic decline, like many other rural areas of southern Italy, but also be the protagonist of a promising annual summer science festival which had contributed to raising some expectations of change. The research has been designed to enable transdisciplinary knowledge production in the urban feld that could matter for the local community and would ultimately produce a real, positive impact on people’s lives. Despite its broad premises to test innovative learning practices with participating students for an ideal future academia, its concrete outcomes have been deeply ingrained in the local community, becoming part of their discussions of daily life and even informing their political agenda.