"Play Brindisi": la città si mette in gioco

**Open the public call aimed at young creatives aged 18 to 35. Three residencies to imagine new uses for public space and build, together, the future of the largest urban park in Italy.** Brindisi is taking on a challenge. Play Brindisi is born: a project that invites young people, communities, creatives, and artists to transform public space into a place of relationship, care, and collective imagination.

The municipality of Brindisi is launching the public call for the Play Brindisi 2026 residencies, an initiative set within the national program "Metro Plus and Medium Cities South 2021–2027", aimed at accompanying the city in urban and social regeneration processes, especially by making young people active protagonists of change.

*The Play Brindisi residencies are designed as residential laboratories for placemaking, self-construction, public art, lightweight architecture, and community participation. The project revolves around three meanings of the English verb "play": play as a practice of relationship and discovery, sports as a driver of inclusion and social activation, culture and music as languages capable of generating cohesion, shared imaginaries, and new forms of belonging.*

At the center of the 2026 edition will be the Cillarese Park, the main urban park of Brindisi and the largest in Apulia, which will become a laboratory, an open construction site, a stage, and a meeting space between those who live in the city every day and those who will come from other Italian and European territories to contribute to building new visions.

The call is addressed to two profiles of participants: on one hand, young creatives, designers, artists, placemakers, architects, social innovators, university students or graduates, aged 18 to 35, resident in Italy or abroad; on the other hand, young people aged 18 to 35 residing in Brindisi and province, interested in the city, art, public space, and collaborative processes. For each residency, 20 people will be selected: 10 from the first profile and 10 from the second.

The 2026 residencies will take place in three sessions: the first from June 7 to 11, the second from September 27 to October 4, and the third from October 4 to 11. The curatorial concept, entrusted to grriz, a multidisciplinary studio with offices in Bologna, Lyon, and Turin, revolves around three narrative images: the island, the boat, the lighthouse. Three distinct but connected chapters that express three ways of being in public space: to inhabit, to traverse, to protect.

The first session, "the island", involves the self-construction of a multifunctional platform in Cillarese Park, intended for cultural, educational, sports, social, and recreational activities. The second session, "the boat", will focus on the theme of exploration through the construction of a shading structure inspired by nautical language, conceived as a place for resting, observing, and meeting. The third session, "the lighthouse", will introduce a symbolic and performative dimension through widespread installations and a workshop open to the citizenship.

*"Play Brindisi is an invitation to engage but also to take care of the city,"* says Mayor Giuseppe Marchionna. *“At a time when Brindisi is called to redefine its development model, urban regeneration cannot just be about the physical transformation of spaces: it must become the construction of community, an alliance between generations, recognition of distributed skills, and activation of new social energies. Brindisi is changing its skin, and it does so within an industrial, energy, urban, and social transition that concerns not only infrastructure, but also how the city chooses to look at itself, tell its story, and inhabit its future. In this historical passage, marked by the progressive overcoming of a model based on heavy industry and the opening towards sustainability, decarbonization, social innovation, and urban regeneration, the project aims to weave connections between local youth, creatives from outside, institutions, local communities, and civic networks, forging collaborative pacts capable of leaving material, narrative, and relational traces.”*

Play Brindisi does not simply produce works "for" the city, but experiences "with" the city. Cillarese Park thus becomes a space to read, listen, traverse, and re-imagine together: a place where Brindisi's transition can take shape through play, care, beauty, participation, and shared responsibility.

Applications must be submitted via the online form available at www.brindisiper.it/playbrindisi. Applications can be submitted until May 31.

Participants from other Italian provinces and abroad will be provided accommodation at the youth hostel in Brindisi, as well as breakfast and dinner. All participants will be provided meals during activities. A participation fee of 200 euros is also planned for the first session and 300 euros for the second and third sessions, contingent upon participation in at least 75% of the scheduled activities.

For more information and clarifications, you can write to: info@brindisiper.it.
Web: www.brindisiper.it