The Mart deepened its investigation into the relationship between young people and the museum with a new project entitled ‘no’ in collaboration with OHT - Office for human theatre.

What would happen if young people could make their voices heard within the city's cultural programming?  What visions, languages, forms and artistic experiences would be proposed?  What ways of inhabiting shared space?

These are the questions we started from to design an initiative that led a group of girls and boys from 16 to 22 years old in the construction of a cultural program aimed at their peers.

A workshop with training sessions and design activities took place from 3 to 5 July and from 10 to 12 July. 7 girls and 3 boys took part as part of school/work alternation programs or after completing secondary school.

The six-day workshop involved various curators, designers, artists and performers, such as Silvia Costa, Erika Z.  Galli from Industria Indipendente, Angelica Stimpfl and associations such as Ufficio Svolta, Lungomare and La Foresta Community Academy.

Filippo Andreatta, Anna Benazzoli and Lucrezia Stenico from OHT delved into the various aspects of curating a cultural event - from planning to programming, from feasibility analysis to communication - trying to uncover the desires and interests of the young participants through dialogue and sharing.  The Mart's Education Area led a workshop on mindfulness and slow looking in the museum's Collections, while Francesca Musolino from the Communication Office addressed the issue of accessibility.

The planning activities of the working group continued remotely over the summer under the coordination of Elisa Pezza, and ended on 6 and 7 September with two days dedicated to fine-tuning the communication of the planned event (poster, flyer and social media content).

On festival took place on Saturday 28 September in the Mart Courtyard. Initially planned for the Sculpture Garden, it was moved indoors due to the weather forecast, offering a program of free activities with workshops, talks, concerts and DJ sets. OHT's Little Fun Palace caravan was the heart of an engaging set-up with artists, activists and musicians, open to the public from 3pm to 11pm.

On festival was born out of the need to create a space that gives voice and visibility to themes and activities that often find no space in classrooms. The idea of the young people who created it was to explore topics "not talked about in school", offering a different learning and sharing opportunity through artistic practice.  ‘We asked ourselves what we were missing and what we would like to learn; this event is the outcome of these questions,’ says the group that planned, communicated and organised the event.

The name of the festival, ‘On’, is the opposite of ‘no’, which in turn derives from ‘noh’, a Vietnamese word expressing remembering and absence.  'On' represents ignition, openness, a free space where each person can interpret and live the experience in a personal, yet collective way.