Cascina 9 is a community-based project, which develops around a multicultural and multifunctional center in Milan's Municipality 9: a creative hub for urban regeneration, a place of action and social inclusion where creative production processes are activated with cultural and social service functions.
The Cascina 9 project wants to create a system of virtuous synergies between local actors with different skills.

This project was born in the neighborhoods of Dergano and Bovisa, two areas of working-class tradition located in the northeastern suburbs of Milan, which have always been places of reception and migration that in the post-war period welcomed the southern population. At the end of the twentieth century, following the dismantling of the factories, the area was disrupted by the recovery of abandoned industrial areas, but has not lost its propensity for craft activities and trade related to human and social relations of the neighborhood. In the last thirty years, the two districts have become the destination of many immigrants.

Although they are often integrated from the point of view of work, they live a cultural marginality. Here the Italian and foreign population live together, but do not dialogue with each other.In the area there is no lack of cultural and socializing initiatives by the many active associations, yet the qualitative analysis of the neighborhoods conducted by the project partners through interviews, indicates the need by foreign communities for meeting places.
The area also has an ancient bond with cinema. The first Italian film studios were born here: Armenia Film, Milano Films and Comerio Films. However, there are no movie theaters in the area today. In November 2016 Asnada and Nuovo Armenia , associations rooted in the Municipality 9 of Milan, win the free assignment for 30 years of the farmhouse in Via Livigno 9, of municipal property, located in the heart of Dergano. With the s.n.c. Gina Films, they planned its renovation to transform it into a multicultural center with a cinema, a foyer and a pedagogical area with two Italian schools. Migration and cinema are the coordinates in which the three realities have been working for years, finding the effectiveness of the synergy between the work of the community based on the teaching of the language, the facilitation of neighborhood relationships, the enhancement of mother tongues; and the work on the imagination, of which cinema is an important vector.

In the same Municipio 9, since 1994, there is the Bovisa campus of the Politecnico di Milano, in particular the School of Design.Since 2012 Imagis Lab, research laboratory of the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, has been working with associations, citizens and the Municipality of Milan to develop multichannel communication projects and produce audiovisual content within Plug Social TV, involving the students of the School of Design.

The Cascina 9 project wants to respond to three fundamental needs, which emerge from the territorial context of Milan's Municipality 9.In this context, the Cascina 9 project aims to support and develop the program of activities and redevelopment of the building in Via Livigno 9, defined by the associations Asnada and Nuovo Armenia , thanks to the design and communication skills of Imagis Lab:

• To offer a place of meeting and exchange, which can be inhabited, used temporarily and recognized as a permanent and significant reference for local communities and interest.
• Support the associations active in the area, which already play an important role and represent the virtuous engine of human and social relations in the neighborhood.
• Create opportunities for dialogue, to mend the relationships between communities of different cultures present in Dergano and Bovisa.