Inhabiting an “Un-common” Space: Health Promotion in the Area of Pescarola, Bologna

Abstract

This article reports on a community-based action-research project initiated in July 2014 by the Centre for International and Intercultural Health. The project aims at promoting health through empowerment and community participation in a low-income suburban area of the city of Bologna (Pescarola). Based on an in-depth analysis of the ethnographic material collected (field notes, interviews, focus groups, meeting transcripts), this article focuses on critical moments of the action-research process, which made us reflect on our role and status in relation to other actors in the field, particularly community members. Specifically, we focus on the opening and development of a community space and on the potential and critical issues inherent to the action-research methods we used, such as community care, creative workshops, and theatre. These methods constitute both answers to the needs that emerged from the initial phase of the research (loneliness and lack of social connections), and strategies to investigate health needs together with the community. Our work shows how, in contexts of marginalisation, the material and symbolic conditions for people’s participation in a collective space, and the very presence of a ‘community’, cannot be assumed, rather they need to be constructed with the people as a central part of the health promoting action.