The book of connections

Context
The AISM Youth Event is an extraordinary moment for the participants and for their personal experience. Each year, they arrive in Rome and enter a dimension in which to overcome their fears, meeting the gaze and support of others and of the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association. The goal of the event is to increase individual awareness of the many issues related to the disease, from its emotional management to the field of progress in scientific research. In 2022 the organizers completely reinvented the entire conference.

Process
In this context we were invited to design an engagement experience for the young participants in line with the general theme, “Connections”: something that could directly engage people and allow them to create a common tangible element through personal expression and connection with others. To accomplish all of this, we invented the “Book of Connections”.

Solution
We formulated three simple guiding questions (1. How are you reconnecting with yourself? – 2. What are you learning from others and from AISM? – 3. How can you help inspire others?) and prepared a large roll of paper on two long tables, as a basis for cultivating a spontaneous artwork together with the approximately 250 participants. Young people were invited to reflect and collect thoughts, fears and hopes, all written inside some pre-cut frames, helped by the suggestion of various evocative illustrations to be intertwined and progressively connected into a single flow.