Say it with light
A participatory light installation co-created with the citizens of Bergamo — collecting 224 testimonies of collective pandemic memory
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challenge
In March 2020, Bergamo became the epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak in Italy. When the emergency passed, the wounds remained. How do you give a community a visible, shared form for what it has lived through? How do you turn private trauma into collective memory?
solution
Citizens were invited to share their testimonies — a single phrase, a fragment of memory, a feeling — through an online survey and a dedicated Instagram page. 224 responses were collected. The most significant phrases were selected and designed as luminous projections onto walls, floors and facades across the city, at sites chosen for their symbolic relevance during the pandemic months — a proposal for a city literally wallpapered with light and words.
Not a monument. A conversation made visible. #DilloConLaLuce demonstrated that participatory design can operate at urban scale — transforming individual testimony into shared public memory. The project produced a co-authored archive of 224 voices, still accessible through @dillo_con_la_luce_bergamo. A model for civic healing through design: not imposed meaning, but meaning constructed with the community it serves.
Starting the project meant starting from uncertainty. Opening an Instagram page and asking strangers to share their most painful memories — in a city still processing collective trauma — was not a neutral act. Three fears were present from the beginning: that no one would respond; that those who did would stay on the surface; and that reaching out to someone who had lost a person might cause more harm than the project was worth. The first responses arrived slowly. Then they kept coming — deeper than anticipated. People sent photographs. They described moments they had never spoken about publicly.
Three testimonies among the 224:
"A pair of shoes and a bag abandoned under a stretcher in the emergency room." — Barbara, psychologist, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital.
"Like a zoo animal, living in a bubble while hoping to return to its old environment." — Mauro, 23.
"No one saves themselves alone." — Alessandra.
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Research
A city that needed to speak
Study of Bergamo's urban landscape, symbolic sites and collective emotional response to the pandemic. Key insight: during lockdown, citizens had already begun to communicate spontaneously — banners, drawings and writings appeared on balconies across the city. "Mola mia." "Andrà tutto bene." The installation built on this existing impulse: give it form, scale and permanence.
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Participatory data collection
224 voices
Testimonies collected between December 2020 and January 2021 through online surveys and the Instagram page @dillo_con_la_luce_bergamo. 224 responses — fragments of memory, emotions and lived experience from citizens across generations and backgrounds. The collection itself became an archive: a public record of how Bergamo experienced those months. Co-creation not as method, but as the project's core content.
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Urban Design
Where the city speaks
City mapping to identify installation sites — selected for local relevance and symbolic significance during the pandemic. Different projection formats planned for different locations: walls, floors, facades across Bergamo's districts. Font: Roboto, no serifs — optimised for legibility at urban scale. The writings integrate discreetly into the urban space, like traces left by the city itself.
year
2020-2021
Client
Concept - Politecnico di Milano, "Luce e colore tra arte e design"
see also
