There is a common feature to all the stories which have forged the lands of Reggio: an ability to create conditions which enable communities to generate products, ideas, ways of being, all continuously perfected and renewed.

There is a striking collective intelligence which manifests itself in an array of contexts, from the lower rural areas to the city and all the way up the Apennine slopes, and which crystallises into community and cooperative associations which produce fragments of possible futures, educational models and widespread quality of life.
Characteristics of the landscape, good agricultural practices and quality food are representative of the local area, as well as the identity of a community which has continuously looked to the world as a horizon of collective change.

“US” would like to provide a transversal narrative, an overview of a land and its communities, which does not succumb to nostalgia despite recognising each element to be a fragment of a continuously renewed present and which identifies relevant elements in apparently distant events from our time. The exhibit was built by first meeting hundreds of cultural and productive realities that preserve the territory knowledge, identities and traditions and that are also involved in the construction of a sustainable future.

“US” is a representation of an open community which includes and attracts stories, intelligence, ideas of the world, embracing them all as part of a collective process.
“US” is the idea of a living landscape in which agriculture, the environment, production, nutrition, education and communities merge and coexist in recognition and awareness, ready to undertake a necessary reconstruction.
“US” is above all an open laboratory, a door to a land which has embraced EXPO occasion to introduce itself to the world and that, along its duration, hosted more than 40.000 visitors.

The exhibit features seven thematic sections: WE channel water, WE work the land, WE breed animals, WE forge communities, WE produce the future, WE. Portraits of a lansdcape, WE love good food.

NOI. Storia di comunità, idee, prodotti e terre reggiane
Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia
16 may 2015 – 30 april 2016

curated by
Luca Molinari

Scientific coordination
Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia
Silvia Chicchi, Elisabetta Farioli, Roberto Macellari, Attilio Marchesini, Georgia Cantoni, Alessandro Gazzottil, Maria Montanari, Riccardo Campanini, Giada Pellegrini, Chiara Pellicciari, Filippo Franceschini, Francesca Monti

Biblioteca Panizzi di Reggio Emilia
Giordano Gasparini, Laura Gasparini, Roberto Marcuccio, Chiara Panizzi, Maurizio Festanti

Ufficio Reggio Emilia per Expo
Massimo Festanti, Saverio Serri, Giovanni Sidoli, Anna Tondelli

Studio Luca Molinari
Milena Sacchi, Claudia Saglimbeni, Ludovica Vacirca , Marta Dore with Alessandro Benetti

Exhibit design
Francesco Librizzi Studio
Francesco Librizzi, Laura Bragalini with Anna Carcano

Graphic design
Tankboys
Marco Campardo, Lorenzo Mason with Simone Spinazzé

Texts
Alessandro Benetti, Marta Dore, Attilio Marchesini, Luca Molinari, Milena Sacchi, Claudia Saglimbeni, Ludovica Vacirca

Photoportraits
Kai-Uwe Schulte-Bunert
Marta Dore (texts)

Press office
Ex-Libris Comunicazione

Comune di Reggio Emilia
Mario Gobbi, Patrizia Paterlini

Exhibit project management
Alessandro Gazzotti, Filippo Franceschini, Saverio Serri, Francesca Monti, Linda Gualdi, Milena Sacchi, Claudia Saglimbeni, Ludovica Vacirca

Photos
Carlo Vannini