Building collectives & weaving networks: how young creatives are reclaiming their space.

From music to arts, dance, and photography, crowded and frantic cities like Milan are a perfect laboratory for new, emergent subcultures. But new voices must organize to reclaim their space.Culture and creativity are elements of our society capable of seeping inside every corner of our lives and of the places we live in. Roaming around crowded and frantic cities like Milan is a perfect example of this feeling: young people from all around the world gather to imagine, debate, and build ideas of every kind, shaking the grounds of our local traditions and giving us the chance to take a peek in the future.

These ideas move silently and then obnoxiously, like minute ghosts that could trigger an explosion of imaginative power at any moment. Anybody willing to follow these traces is ensuring a one-way ticket for a spectacular show with never-heard-before sounds, powerful dance moves, and mind-bending scenographies.

All around the world, young creatives are tirelessly working and researching to express themselves and the reality surrounding them. Often, cities are perfect catalyzers for this sweeping momentum. This is why Nite Sports, the new campaign from Ambush, made some stops in Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Mexico City, and Milan: gathering agitators of every kind and giving them a space to express their creativity.For its last stop in Milan, Nite Sports took residency inside the pools of Piscina Argelati, a swimming pool in the heart of the Navigli neighborhood, and invited local and global excellences to curate the music selection boasting from a proper soundsystem.

This is a story that NIKE & Ambush wanted to tell with the support of a local creative institution, so the promoters of Nite Sports partnered with?Antonioli, that has been leading the streetwear pack since forever and?knows very well the importance of keeping in touch with emerging talents of the creative world.

Back in Piscina Argelati, during the afternoon the decks have been presided over by?Slipmode, a local crew from Milan inviting Sayri, a platform of celebration, dissidence, and resistance from the diaspora of Abya Yala. Afterward, the global legends of NTS Radio, whose task was to curate the nighttime of the event, stepped aside to leave the stage to Upsammy and Tadleeh.

When it comes to Slipmode, a group of young creatives based in Milan, their roots are deeply skewered in the essence of collaboration and mutual support. Born in the middle of 2022, Slipmode is a network of artists, friends, and cultural agitators working every day to create a platform for practitioners of many different arts to share tools, experiences, and contacts much needed to reclaim a space in which they can feel represented. Their path started with a free DJing & mixing workshop designed for young females and non-binary creatives. A starting point for anybody interested in DJing but never had the chance to access a proper course with the right equipment.

Since then, they kept on collaborating and supporting each other, creating a much-needed space for aspiring creatives that couldn’t find a comfortable place for themselves in the often-overcrowded Milanese scene. Their unique approach has been evident also during the Nite Sports activation.“We curated the music selection for the afternoon, bringing in Sayri, a platform super-close to Slipmode,” tells Nina Schutz, one of the foundress of Slipmode. “The guests could come in and chill around a powerful soundsystem while listening to music. After us, our friends from NTS Radio took the lead for the rest of the evening.”“We created Slipmode to build a space that could expand from our interests, especially when it comes to the involvement of women,” goes on Nina. “We feel that there’s a lack of women-led spaces where everybody can come and learn without any sort of gatekeeping.”“The idea behind Slipmode is to build a platform with one priority: access to culture,” states Sofia Blu Cremaschi, co-foundress of Slipmode. “This means making equipment available, creating occasions to learn and to gather, to exchange skills, contacts, and experiences. We are creating a space for any kind of creative person: we started from music, but we want to expand to many different disciplines.”In this sense, Slipmode evolved from its origins as a collective to become a platform for young creatives, “We are a network: we share knowledge and we support each other. And it looks like it’s working because our group is broadening — new people are joining, working together by sharing tools, contacts, spaces,” says Nina. “We even managed to build a circle of friends that are making their equipment a common good, putting in use instruments that maybe sat unused for months and sharing them with Slipmode’s network.”The work Slipmode is doing is essential to properly foster the cultural ecosystem in Milan, enabling emergent creatives passionate about different disciplines to have the chance to explore and better understand arts without having to deal with often inaccessible economic barriers. The trust behind the mutual support characterizing Slipmode’s network couldn’t have been possible without it being rooted in proper friendships and admiration for each other's way of expressing themselves.Their story is a perfect example of how young people are spontaneously dealing with the shrinking space of action when it comes to arts & culture, especially in a global metropolis: by sharing knowledge, they mutually enable the learning of new skills, and by making contacts a common good, they slowly dismantle the gatekeepers they, before, found along the way. By building collectives and weaving networks, young creatives like them are paving the road for a new, much-needed creative movement.