ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyses three different urban occupation experiences in Rome. (1) The mobilisation of young adult activists that occupy an old factory facility in the peripheral area of the capital. This group pursues a community-based squatting, including migrant families and Roma people, while hosting a popular contemporary art museum. (2) The occupation of a public building in the downtown Rome that hosts hundreds of migrants. This squat offers many events, including concert and political meetings, becoming an important connecting place for radical left-wing activists in the city. (3) The occupation of the Valle Theatre by artists (especially actors) and activists. They run new forms of self-management of the theatre schedule and theatre laboratory. At the same time, the movement created around the occupation combines political and creative practices based on the common goods, cooperation, mutuality and civic participation. Instead of integrating the system, these agencies aim to create or re-found alternative institutions, asserting a sense of justice, social rights, a ‘right to the city’, creativity and ethics in opposition to the neoliberal system and cultural market.
