THE FRINGE
the nolo fringe festival
The Nolo Fringe Festival is a performing arts festival that wants to give an opportunity to multidisciplinary shows of all kinds and genres, created by artists who like to take a challenge and enjoy experimenting. It takes place in unconventional spaces where those on stage are in close contact with a new, curious and open-minded audience.
The festival is divided into two parts: the official programme includes the companies which had responded to an international calling and are selected according to criteria of technical feasibility, novelty of the proposal and balanced programming. Every evening they take turns on the main “stages” of the festival. The second part, the ‘Fringe Extra’, includes other shows, performances and meetings that take place in different locations within the neighborhood.
The NoLo Fringe Festival is by its nature open, inclusive, international, tolerant, multicolored, fun and carefree. It is also attentive, thoughtful, deep, passionate and sincere at the same time.
6 days of shows performed in a place where such things had never happened before: in the Milanese district of NoLo, home to a thousand souls of which the festival intends to be the collector, and in places such as pubs, gyms, event spaces, hubs, clubs, restaurants, parks, whose use during the rest of the year is completely different.
NOLO
Milan is divided into neighborhoods with defined historical and socio-demographic connotations. Migration and generational turnover have not changed this feature of the city. NoLo (aka North of Loreto) was born within this metropolitan context, an acronym that ironically mimics the New York neighborhoods, such as SoHo and TriBeCa.
The boundaries of the NoLo neighborhood go from Piazzale Loreto to the bridges of the Central Station railway, in via Leoncavallo. A working-class neighborhood from the first half of the twentieth century, NoLo went through years of difficult coexistence among different cultural identities, and is today one of the most multiethnic and bustling neighborhoods of Milan. In short, a territory that is sometimes portrayed as a place of difficult integration, and other times as one of the most culturally lively areas of the entire city. It is precisely in this mixture that NoLo has found its own lively and unique identity.
Social networks have contributed to the settlement of the neighborhood’s communities, in fact many social street experiences were born in Milan in recent years. A prime example is The NoLo Social District, founded in 2016 by two professionals which today has more than 9000 members. It has helped to bring a breath of fresh air to one of the most problematic suburbs of the city, through discussions and proposals on the web that soon became reality.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AS A CREATIVE FACTOR
Respect for the environment is at the heart of the NoLo Fringe Festival.
It was clear from the start that even cultural events are not exempt from direct and indirect pollution production, for this reason our action is twofold. On the one hand we are committed to adopting low-impact systems on all aspects of the event, on the other we produce concrete ideas and solutions from which the public can draw ideas and inspiration.
Environmental sustainability is therefore our creative factor: already existing materials are used for the installations, which at the end of the event will not be simply thrown away, but will be transformed into something new, beautiful and useful.
“Nothing is destroyed, everything is reused!” As a matter of fact, after the NoLo Fringe Festival 2019, the installations that embellished the stages of the event are back to living a new life. In particular, the whales built in plastic (bottles and caps collected in the neighbourhood thanks to the precious help of all) were crushed and shaped and successfully made into nice whale-shaped key chains thanks to BackBo’s machinery, an innovative plastic transformation project.
The creative recycling, especially of waste materials, is one of the fundamental challenges we face. Our solution is a continuous transformation of matter, just as an actor transforms himself to create infinite new characters for the stage. We believe in a theatre that makes an impact on people rather than the environment.
