City space and children’s skills : new uses of urban space in the Noce neighboorhood of Palermo

The general topic is that of policies like community education to combat educational poverty addressed to the social and economic contexts of regions and urban areas characterized by hardship and a high level of school dropout. Understanding the inevitable connections between the role of public urban space indoors and outdoors is crucial in these policies. "PEC - Poli Educanti in Condivisione" (educational poles in sharing) is a project of integrated actions realized by a partnership made up of schools and third sector institutions and universities (in the role of external evaluator). PEC aims to combat educational poverty in the Noce district of Palermo to activate poles in close synergy with each other, where members of the community meet and are formed, who become competent and therefore "educating". The extension of the opportunities for the integrated development of children/young people aged between 5 and 14 at risk of social exclusion and the growth of transversal skills necessary to strengthen their resilience capacities in the social dimension into the urban space considered are the target. The contribution highlights that urban space ends up being the protagonist of almost all the actions of the integrated project that necessarily took place in public open spaces. Social science and practical knowledge related to childcare and adolescence were used to develop the PEC project. Whereas "PEC" is aimed at changing the lifestyles of children in a disadvantaged neighborhood, the urban space is not only the physical environment in which all the project activities take place but is a vital function of the subject involved by the project both at the individual and collective level as relational capital of the educational community.