At the Visual Assembly, we asked high school art students to imagine Venice as one big open-air museum. Their response was instant: “It’d be better if it were something else!” That kicked off a bigger conversation — not just about Venice, but about cities everywhere that are stuck between being beautiful for tourists and livable for real people. The Assembly took place in an old hospice, now an art academy, and the kids came up with amazing ideas: artist-designed trash bins (Venice barely has any!) and mobile platforms for concerts and readings. By the end, students who barely spoke to each other were building things together, supporting each other, and finding shared solutions. Their teacher was stunned — she said it changed how she saw the whole class.

That’s what Visual Assemblies are really about: giving people the space to imagine how life could be, if we actually had the power to shape it ourselves. It’s not about inventing something new, but about bringing back old ways of creating together — like festivals, dances, carnivals. The day after this Visual Assembly, Leopoldo Zampiccoli and Nika Dubrovsky held two more Visual Assemblies at Festival dei Matti in Venice. On June 30th, the Visual Assemblies will head to East Africa, starting with an event in collaboration with the Sigana International Storytelling Festival in Nairobi, Kenya.

Let a thousand Visual Assemblies bloom. This is how we win!