Abstract
Polisfonia is an educational format that aims to explore how the creative use of sound, as means of perception and expression, could serve as educational practice to facilitate political dialogue between people, towards a collective (re)envisioning and shaping of their own life-spaces. It generated from a transdisciplinary, situated and practice-based research bridging arts, design and education with the aim to contribute to the formation of public open and engaging spaces for political, social and cultural exchange in the city of Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy). Drawing inspiration on the theories and practices of popular, engaged and libertarian education by Paulo Freire, Bell Hooks and Ivan Illich, it takes the form of a mobile participatory gathering, a modular system of collaboratively designed and executed workshops, each with a unique approach in merging the dimensions of political dialogue, sound and public space. A total of 4 different workshops involving 60 participants were tested in South Tyrol between August and November 2021. First results suggest that Polisfonia could be an effective format to foster political dialogue, and a valuable tool to collectively elaborate shared political issues and to identify possibilities for political action and participation in everyday life. In this paper, core principles, values and structures of the educational format are presented, first results and emerging issues are reflected, and desirable future developments are outlined.