All the events and activities organised in the Italian city during the project’s second year

In Lucca, the year started off with the launch of the Lucca IN-HUB via Zoom on the 19^th of January. The meeting was attended by 50 people, including representatives of the Municipality of Lucca and the University of Pisa, and aimed to engage the representatives of the target groups of interest in order to: share visions and work goals, share the motivations that link individuals’ personal interests to the actions of IN-HABIT, and initiate work ideas and actions.

There was also another launch later in the year – that of the municipality’s project social media accounts, with IN-HABIT Lucca joining Facebook and Instagram in May/June.

The Lucca IN-HABIT team has also attended various public events during the year, including the Verdemura event and Liberation Day Concert in April and the Festival del Fiume in June. Event attendance is a pivotal, integral part of both the communication strategy and the engagement strategy for IN-HABIT. These events offered the opportunity to display project leaflets and brochures, show people the path of the Animal Lines and the other areas where the hard solutions will be deployed, provide information and explanations about the project, and hand out questionnaires to the citizens. Furthermore, Lucca Crea introduced its card game aimed at school students at the Verdemura event and, at the Festival del Fiume, an eco-walk exploring the river’s fauna and flora was carried out by an expert biologist and rescue dogs, trained by a specific organisation, were brought in for a simulation.

With their focus on the Human-Animal Bond, the Lucca IN-HABIT team inspected the municipal facility “Pontetetto kennel”, managed by the cooperative “Ponte Verde” of Pisa, in May. This important facility is being expanded and will soon open a space for temporary accommodation for animals. In June, the team also visited and met with the Director of Pia Casa, a 60 people RSA located in the historic centre of Lucca. While Pia Casa has an attached feline colony, it has no relationship with it. The Director is in favour of projects involving animals, and the RSA has two large green cloisters, providing welcoming spaces suitable for different forms of human-animal interactions.

Finally, the year also saw a site visit from Professor Maria del Mar Delgado Serrano from the University of Cordoba. The IN-HABIT team welcomed her in the Municipality premises and subsequently accompanied her on a walk through Lucca to visit the city’s most significant places, as well as some related to the Animal Lines.