Monicahope wakes up in the house where she and her family live on the slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Her morning routine is similar to that of many other children around the world: she gets out of bed, washes her face, puts on clean clothes, eats breakfast with her parents and siblings, then puts on her backpack and heads down the street for a new day of school. He crosses the city moving among the chaos and contrasts that characterize the suburbs of large cities, but when she arrives at school she realizes that it is completely empty.

This is the beginng of the short film made by Still I Rise, which will be hosted at the Italian Pavilion of the International Architecture Exhibition of Biennale Architettura 2021. This year the Italian Pavilion is dedicated to the theme of "Resilient Communities" and aims to make visitors think in an innovative way about how communities must learn to adapt and change in order to respond to social and environmental changes.

Still I Rise has the opportunity to tell the stories of its students within the Biennale thanks to an invitation from LWCircus. The collaboration between the two organizations will continue in the coming months, when LWCircus architects will fly to Kenya to create, together with our students, a project that will make our school even more special!

Biennale Architettura 2021 is taking place from May 22 to November 21.

The Italian Pavilion is hosted at Tese delle Vergini, Arsenale, Venezia.

For more information: https://www.comunitaresilienti.com/ 

On May 27 Nicolò Govoni took part in the Presentation Symposium. The recording of the event is available here (Still I Rise speech starts at 4:38:30).