The L’Aquila area is preparing to become a large-scale participatory work of art. The City Council has approved a new edition of“Inside Out – The People’s Art Project by JR,”a global initiative by French artist JR that will directly involve local citizens and communities as part of L’Aquila’s bid to become the 2026 Italian Capital of Culture.

The Inside Out project, led by ArtsFor, will bring one of the most renowned participatory public art experiences on the international stage to the capital of Abruzzo. Over 2,000 residents of L’Aquila and the surrounding area will be invited to become key participants in the project through a series of meetings, conversations, and discussions that will lead to the creation of their photographic portraits.

The participants’ faces will then be transformed into large black-and-white posters that will be installed in urban spaces, creating a large-scale collective art installation that tells the story of the community of L’Aquila and its surrounding area.

This participatory initiative is part of the “L’Aquila: City and Territory” program, made possible through the ReStart development program, and aims to strengthen the role of culture as a tool for social cohesion, the revitalization of inland areas, and civic participation.

The initiative is part of a year packed with cultural events and projects that will mark 2026 in L’Aquila, helping to create a calendar of events designed to showcase the region, engage the community, and strengthen the city’s international standing.

The project draws inspiration from the global spirit of Inside Out, an artistic platform launched by JR in 2011 following the TED Prize, which has grown over the years into an international movement with more than 2,600 collective projects carried out in 152 countries and more than 500,000 portraits collected.

In L’Aquila, the initiative will be accompanied by the motto “We Are a Community,” a message intended to highlight the sense of belonging and the bond between the city and the areas within the earthquake-affected zone, at a symbolic moment in the city’s journey toward rebirth and its cultural future.

Bringing JR’s project to L’Aquila means giving concrete form to one of the core principles of the Capital of Culture year: putting people and the community at the center. Through the faces of our citizens, we will tell the story of our identity, the strength of our region, and the journey of rebirth we are experiencing. “It will be a collective work that belongs to everyone and that will bring L’Aquila and the surrounding areas into an international network of public and participatory art,” says Pierluigi Biondi, mayor of L’Aquila.

The project involves creating portraits of the participants and subsequently installing large-format posters throughout the city, transforming L’Aquila into a vast open-air art gallery and directly involving citizens, associations, and local organizations.