About us
Hubout’s idea was born in 2013 as a result of reflections on the impact of youth policies on local development, matured in the constant and continuous exchange of the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo with a rather large network of local stakeholders. It was born as a Creative Laboratory but in a short time it transformed. The main guidelines on which the idea of ​​Hubout has developed are based on the debate promoted at national level that combines social innovation actions with local development.

The concept
The idea was to start from the concept of HUB as a pivot and not as a center. A hub for the creation of new relationships and networks, for the intersection of ideas and creativity, for the development of active and aware citizenship and social cohesion. The word OUT alongside this idea of ​​HUB wants to promote the birth of hubs, outside a “center”, because what is central is relationships and in particular those with the places we live in. However, they should have a similar function so that they can contribute to developing a sense of community and belonging to a territory and act as an element of innovation, not only in relationships but in the actions that are taken to make it regenerate. Urban regeneration is one of the mantras of our day. We thought and still think that it is important to combine the action of renewal of spaces and infrastructures with the ability of the territories to re-activate and re-animate, because only in this way bonds between citizens can be strengthened: cohesion and active citizenship are so created.

The strategy
Hubout starts from youthful creativity. The first project in fact gave life to ZAC – Shared Artistic Areas (ZAC) thanks to the commitment of over 30 young people in the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo alone and over 20 in the Municipality of Fermo. It was the pilot initiative, in which the relationship between citizens and their living environment, their city, mediated by the artistic production was the background to all the design action, starting from the participatory processes. Citizens’ interest in “public affairs”, for common goods, we would say today, has emerged thanks to the work of young artists and craftsmen, creatives and curators who have contributed to building and implementing concrete connection strategies, such as the wooden square in Largo Milano. An invasive but temporary work, because the idea is that the interventions must be a visible example of how a space, if there is the care, passion and will of those who live in it, can become a resource for the community also during the change. It is not important that a space survives that much over time, but it is important that within a community the ability, the desire and the habit to renew the public space and rebuild it to one’s own measure for one’s needs are generated.
Just as we do when we change home furnishings, because the public space “belongs to us”. Working on and with a territory, promoting cohesion and a sense of community has been the goal of hubout from the beginning. Starting from the artistic production, from the idea of ​​participatory public art, was instead the winning choice that allowed to graft territorial animation processes capitalizing also the skills of the social workers. The participatory process is central, but the final product is equally important and aesthetically beautiful because it is an artisan and artistic product at the same time. Art creates because it frees the creative resources of a territory from the constraint of the norm, of the routine, in the name of the work of genius, of the unique work that does not commit except for the time of its realization. For this reason it cannot be repeated continuously. Forms of maintenance must be found as well as other forms of activation and territorial animation. To give life to unedited connections or to re-establish bonds means to provoke. Public art must provoke confrontation and discussion by promoting the critical sense, driving the sense of initiative that drives people to meet. Listening to the needs of a territory lies at the basis of every community action. With Hubout we wanted to interpret the need as the expression of a desire. We understood and discovered that there was and still is a desire for beauty, care, meeting knowledge and sociability.

Social innovation for social development
Our desire to stimulate the territory to grow and learn by promoting innovative projects and services stems from the awareness of playing an important role in local development. We thus created MakersLab in 2016: the first digital manufacturing laboratory in Lombardy opened in a public library and the second in Italy after Pistoia. A service that is still active thanks to the fruitful collaboration with the CSBNO which has also created, with a view to contaminating knowledge, other manufacturing workshops in libraries in the Milanese hinterland. You an find on this site all the information in the dedicated section. In 2018 we inaugurated the SpazioCofò coworking space, at the Villa di Breme Forno in Cinisello Balsamo. The first public coworking space in the province of Milan. A service still active and managed by a youth association. Also on this service you will find information in the dedicated section. But we have done even more. The SpazioCofò experience has become a good practice, the theme of a partnership with the city of Matera. The partnership project is funded under the “Synergies” notice and aims to replicate the same experience in Matera and go further, introducing experimentation on the development of digital and entrepreneurial skills. Started in March 2020, it will have to achieve the targets set by 31.07.2021.