ReLOAd, which rises out of the experience of the construction of media centers and public access internet spaces all over Italy, as well as continuous experimentation with technology and new tools for electronic communication, is a real and welcoming place. Here anyone can get free access to the internet, access a media library for exchanging information, use resources to produce independent news via web-radio or street television, take courses in computing with freely shareable software rather Microsoft's, and meet competent people to connect with, and enjoy experimenting with new technologies. The essence of the ReLOAd model is that this experimentation with media, technology, communications and education should be situated in the larger community, building strong ties with the social dimension in which the project is located.

ReLOAd takes form in occupied spaces, from a shop with window displays easily accessible by the public, to other commercially-determined spaces in the city centre. 'We live and work in the neighbourhood where we have been settled for 6 years,' explains one ReLOAd worker. 'People know us and look to us for technological help and also for everyday socialising. Isola is still a very popular district, which has only started being gentrified, but Milano in general is quite numb concerning defending spaces. While it has been easy to get people involved in our activities it has also been difficult to mobilize the neighborhood to defend us when the time has come.'

When ReLOAd found itself without space, after two evictions, it began to organize citywide assemblies. These have become important moments in their own right for strategic aggregation and the sharing of problems. The ideas and actions that have taken form here around 'social precarity' (casualisation), including three years of MayDay parades drawing up to 30,000 people, have also done significant amounts to highlight the connections between communications and modern labour struggles.

But the group also continued with physically-situated activities, at the LOA laboratory inside the Pergola's BULK space, where ReLOAd radio now has its studios. The collective have added a cafe space offering 'brains, computers and couches' and also host concert and disco evenings, and Screem, a regularly screened collection of videos about information and power. This part of the project is also fulfilling another of ReLOAd's central aims: enouraging local people to meet, share and grow together, outside of right-wing cultural power.

The LOA Hacklab, a hacker collective who see hacking 'as a means to reconfigure things so as to make them work better', make up some of the core ReLOAd collective. They see the project's central values - sharing, co-participation, freedom – as a natural extension of their work as hackers. The collective have organised dozens of courses, seminars and workshops over five years, and have contributed to campaigns against the SIAE (Italian copyright agency) and copyright as a limitation on the free circulation of knowledge. 'The idea is to start a laboratory for experimentation,' say the collective, 'so as to amplify ideas, uses of technology, information production skills and to confront old and new social problems with new tools made available to all.'

Current offerings include workshops and short seminars, which bind practical experimentation to detailed theoretical explanation. 'We try to strike a constant balance of explaining things and having people put their hands on it right away,' explains a teacher at ReLOAd, 'generating a exponential curve of learning. At the start, it might be a bit tough, but the strong grounding means things soon get easier.'