La Foresta, Rovereto

Name: La Foresta
Time frame: 2017 –
Location: in a space within Rovereto train station
People/organisational structure: diverse working groups and individuals across various backgrounds, horizontally organised and working with principles of co-design
Main idea: community academy where different cultures and the various civic actors in the area could come together to learn from each other, both in theory and practice, in order to explore emerging commons and community economies
Activities: DIY workshops, urban gardening, drink making, risoprinting, free shop, mobile bread oven, Erasmus + opportunities, festivals (e.g. on Rural Commoning), artist residencies, and more
Facilities: public space in the train station provided by the municipality, containing a workshop, meeting space, kitchen, toilets
Finances: project funding, co-working, gifting, volunteering, Erasmus
Website: laforesta.net

A full version of this text, written and edited collectively by Katharina Moebus, Melissa Harrison, Fabio Franz, Bianca Elzenbaumer, Flora Mammana, Angelica Cianflone and other La Forest members, has been published in the Urban Commons Handbook (2021)

La Foresta is a community academy that is located at the train station of Rovereto in the valley of Vallagarina, Trentino, an autonomous province in the North of Italy. The project was collectively founded in 2017: the initiators were motivated by the desire to create a space where different cultures and the various civic actors in the area could come together to learn from each other, both in theory and practice, in order to explore emerging commons and community economies. As such, the space and project provide an infrastructure for emergent commoning practices, on the one hand, and an avenue to shape concrete demands and practices for the territory as a commons, on the other.

The name La Foresta means ‘forest’: a metaphor that hints at a complex ecosystem that recognises and values both the visible and invisible doings that comprise and sustain it. La Foresta also means ‘the female one coming from outside’ in the local dialect. Symbolically, this helps the group embrace newcomers and new ideas from different places and domains which, through their interaction, weave an important basis for the actions that take place; and, moreover, centre those who are most vulnerable in our society. La Foresta consists of a diverse mix of people coming from various fields and backgrounds—with a predominance of locals coming from different parts of Italy but also people from Germany, Spain, and Brazil. You become part of La Foresta by simply joining their activities. When you want to participate in the decision-making processes, you can attend the weekly public assembly, where all issues regarding future development are discussed. Since mid-2020, La Foresta is also formally registered as an association: the academy needed a legal form as a tool to access public funding. However, to be part of the decision-making processes, one does not necessarily need to pay the annual membership fee.

The collaboration with the national rail company came into being in 2017 when a group of people started to look for a space for commoning. There were signs at the train station indicating that they wanted to rent out some of their (mostly vacant) spaces—a phenomenon occurring across Italy. The group contacted the Italian Railways with a proposal to use the space for 3 years, without payment, to experiment with cultural and social activities which was, to their surprise, accepted: this unfolded in collaboration with the municipality who was in prior contact with the Italian Railways. The location of the space, in a train station, is a key impetus for the project as a place of transition and exchange—serving as a door to and from the wider world and cultural ecosystems. This also makes it easier for the group to get together, as the train station is a key anchor point for the entire valley, not just for the town of Rovereto. The fact that the space at the train station was not consistently available—due to construction work commencing in January 2020 and followed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020—made it difficult to involve more vulnerable groups through regular activities.

As an infrastructure, La Foresta has multiple functions: it serves as a space, both nomadic and consistent, material and immaterial, for different cultures and civic actors to get together and learn from each other. This contributes to collective knowledge production as well as the agency of those involved to act in their immediate surroundings. Furthermore, the community academy provides an affective infrastructure that fosters and supports the relationships that are being built in the valley between humans and more-than-humans alike. Accordingly, La Foresta, as the name implies, helps to make visible the many hidden, interdependent activities that contribute to the survival and thriving of our ecosystem and society: nurturing and taking care of each other, considering the vulnerable ones who might not have a voice, and growing together.

At current, all the projects and activities of La Foresta are taking place nomadically across the valley—something they would like to retain as an element of what they do. La Foresta produces their own community drinks with the project Comunità Frizzante: through participatory processes, making the drinks provides a tool for conversation about the valley’s development and economies; it is also a means to connect people and encourage them to discover, together, the places where they live. Further, there is a travelling bread oven, Forno Vagabondo, that stops in different neighbourhoods of Rovereto and the surrounding villages: a playful investigation into food sovereignty and, also, a way to get people together who might otherwise not come to the project space, for example, by baking on playgrounds and public squares after school when they are full of kids and parents. There is a community garden that is connected to the project—comun’orto—and a diversity of additional working groups, such as a cinema group, a forest kindergarten, a refugees support group; and one person who is intensely recycling and repurposing objects.

As a professional infrastructure for ecologically and socially oriented creatives, they run an informal residency program and regularly invite young graduates to join the group for Erasmus-funded internships to catalyse an exchange with other places and people and to support cultural activists in their personal and professional development. Their economy is diverse and consists of project funding, lots of volunteer work, donations and fundraising, and some research projects people are involved in. With projects like Comunità Frizzante, they try to build up their own productive economy to become less dependent on public funding; and, more broadly, to contribute to the landscape of community economy projects where everyone involved is treated equally and in a fair and respectful manner—more-than-humans and humans alike.

In terms of creating an infrastructure or avenue to shape concrete demands and practices for the location as a commons—connected to their broader political engagement with the protection and creation of urban (and rural) commons—La Foresta is part of a movement called La Rete Nazionale Beni Comuni Emergenti e ad Uso Civico. It was founded in early 2019 as a response to a law proposal, made by Ugo Mattei and colleagues, which did not take into consideration the commons practices that have developed in Italy over the last 10 years. Specifically, in Naples, people from the project Ex-Asilo Filangieri pursued legal frameworks for commoning practices after managing to secure common spaces that are both recognized at the municipal level and self-governed by the community that use, maintain, and live in them. La Foresta proactively contributes to this network by participating in national assemblies, collaborating with Ex-Asilo lawyers to develop legal frameworks in the Rovereto context, and hosting members of the network (especially from Naples).

What might happen when the three years of free-use of the space at the train station are over? La Foresta has already shown, out of necessity, that not having a space changes the nature and possibilities of the project, but it also opens up new possibilities, such as a nomadic practice that travels to the people who might not come to the project otherwise. In the case that the space can be used longer-term—and also if not—it might inspire other groups to claim train stations in Italy, and elsewhere in the world, to open up free infrastructure for commons projects where people can exchange ideas and cultural practices. The train station as a place of transition is ideal for this: an infrastructure for the creation of porous communities and transient relationships that make people feel welcome in the world, wherever they go—as an urban commons which allows everyone ‘coming from the outside’ in.