In 1981, the village of Ulassai in Sardinia became the setting for one of the most extraordinary acts of community art in recent European history. Drawing on an old Sardinian legend of a girl who survived by following a blue ribbon carried on the wind, the artist Maria Lai, herself a native of Ulassai, returned to her village with an unusual proposal. Together, the community would physically connect the village to the mountain above it with a continuous sky-blue ribbon. What emerged was not simply an artwork but a powerful reflection on relationships, belonging and community.

Working together with local weavers and the wider community, Lai bound the houses of the village together with the ribbon. But the ribbon was not merely decorative. It carried a code, and the code was relational.

The relational code of the ribbon

The genius of Maria Lai’s intervention was the meaning she and the community assigned to each variation of the ribbon as it passed from house to house. A straight, taut ribbon signified conflict or strain between the households it connected. A simple knot represented neighbourliness: the basic recognition of the person next door. A bow indicated friendship, the warmer and more chosen connection that goes beyond mere adjacency. And where the ribbon was tied to a decorative loaf of bread shared between neighbours, it celebrated the deepest bonds of affection and family.

This code transformed a single material into a language.

Maria Lai did something remarkably simple. She turned relationships into something people could literally see. Every ribbon became a sentence. Every knot became a declaration. Every bow acknowledged affection that usually remained private. Every straight stretch quietly admitted that relationships are not all equal.

As the ribbon passed through the village, it became a visible map of the social relationships within the community. Every resident could see not only their own connection to their neighbours but the wider pattern of bonds, strains and solidarities that held the village together. The ribbon made the invisible visible, and in doing so, it gave the community something rare and precious: a shared portrait of itself.

Making relationships visible

The significance of the project lay not simply in the act of connecting the village but in making its relationships visible. Communities usually know where their roads run, where their houses stand and who owns which piece of land. They rarely have a way of seeing where trust exists, where friendships flourish or where tensions quietly remain unresolved.

Most community initiatives begin by asking what resources a place lacks. Maria Lai began by revealing what already existed. The project did not create relationships from nothing. It surfaced them. Once visible, they could be acknowledged, celebrated and, where needed, strengthened.

The artwork also transformed the identity of Ulassai. Over the decades that followed, the village became internationally recognised through Maria Lai’s work, celebrating its weaving traditions and developing a cultural identity that continues to attract visitors from around the world. Whether through art, tourism or local pride, the project demonstrated that relationships and culture can become powerful community assets.

The code as a diagnostic tool

The Ulassai ribbon code offers something more than a compelling story. It offers a diagnostic tool for any team or community willing to apply it honestly.

Imagine your organisation drawn as Maria Lai drew Ulassai. Every reporting line disappears. Every job title disappears. What remains are ribbons joining people.

Where would the straight lines of unresolved tension be found? Where would the simple knots of neighbourliness be tied? Where would the bows of genuine friendship appear? And where, if anywhere, would the bread of deep care and belonging be shared?

This mapping does not require a physical ribbon. It requires only the honest attention that Maria Lai brought to her village: the willingness to see the relational landscape of a community as it actually is, rather than as we might prefer it to be, and to treat that honest seeing as the beginning of something that can be built upon.

Visibility as the first act of community building

The deepest lesson of Ulassai is that making the relational landscape visible is itself a community-building act. When we can see the pattern of connection and disconnection in our community, we are no longer passive inhabitants of that pattern. We become its potential authors. We can see where a knot needs to be tied, where a bow might be offered and where the simple act of sharing bread might begin the slow work of healing a relationship that has been allowed to harden.

Maria Lai never claimed that ribbons could solve conflict. They could not. What they could do was make relationships impossible to ignore.

Communities change when people begin to see themselves not simply as individuals living alongside one another, but as threads in the same piece of fabric. Before we can strengthen those threads, we first have to notice them.

Questions for reflection

If you were to map the physical lines between the members of your team using the Ulassai code, where would the straight lines of strain and the knots of neighbourliness be located?

What action can you take this week to weave a visible knot or bow into a strained relational corner of your community or organisation?

Think of a relationship in your immediate environment that has been allowed to remain at the level of a straight ribbon for too long. What would the first step towards a knot actually look like?

How could your team or community use a creative, visible act, physical, digital or symbolic, to map and strengthen its relational landscape in the way the Ulassai ribbon did?

Inspired by Russell, C. and McKnight, J. (2022) The Connected Community: Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighbourhoods. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.