With the UNESCO recognition of Ivrea, an industrial city, some cultural actors wondered if their sector and the public were ready to recognize such an acknowledgment, seizing the opportunities in a creative and participatory way.
Problems and Purpose
A group of cultural operators, stimulated by UNESCO recognition, have set up a community network, open to all the other cultural organizations in the city, which has started working on 3 general objectives:
- Mapping and understanding the cultural audience of the city of Ivrea;
- Reinforcing the community itself by enabling it to train professionally and stimulate the cultural leadership of the public (especially the youth);
- Collecting information, contributions, and stimuli encountered along the way and enhancing them through real activities to be carried out together with the citizens, so that they remain a gift to the city as a useful and reasoned heritage.[1]
Background History and Context
With the UNESCO recognition of Ivrea, an industrial city of the twentieth century along with the acquisition of the former Olivetti factories by Icon srl, a group of some cultural operators in the city set themselves at the helm of a network project. It aimed to analyze demand and cultural offerings, training and stimulating the public, especially youth, and therefore organizing activities together with citizens. The project was submitted to the Open Community call of the Compagnia di San Paolo, obtaining funding.
Ivrea is a municipality in northern Piedmont, the birthplace of Camillo and Adriano Olivetti, where the Olivetti industrial epic arose. The town, with 17,000 inhabitants in 1951, reached 29,000 residents by 1971 in the period of maximum industrial growth, after which a steady decline began, up to the current 23,000. The political tradition is left-wing, center-left, while a center-right mayor has been in office since 2018.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The network of communities with which the project started is composed of some of the main cultural organizations of the city of Ivrea:
- Public Cultural Association-08
- PA Garda Museum
- Zac! - Active areas of citizenship
- Natale Capellaro Foundation and Technologically Museum Laboratory
- The Fifth Enlargement Association
- Cooperative Alce Rosso
- Association Il Contato del Canavese
Project Manager: Alessandro Ottenga, leader of Public Cultural Association-08.
This configuration is strengthened by the presence of some associated partners who share the intended purposes and collaborate in the operational implementation of some project actions: [2]
All of the cultural organizations involved, both public and private, have accepted the proposal to start working in a systemic logic, with the aim of overcoming a historical fragmentation that has often limited both the creative potential of the local cultural scene and its participation. The common commitment is therefore to give life to an increasingly solid "IVREA18-2096" community, which over time becomes a reference for:
- launching new processes of cultural participation;
- favoring dynamics of exchange and collaboration between the subjects involved in the network;
- making the community autonomous in the management of the initiatives launched;
- contributing to the sustainability of the same initiatives over time
The community network shares an approach to the development and involvement of the cultural public based on the concepts of "Identity, Vision, Responsibility, Heredity, Activation" and on the historical-futuristic coding "18-2096": a combination that must trigger a city-imaging process, capacity building and co-creation useful to improve the level of cultural planning and programming in the city.
The community network of the “Cittadini illumina (n) ti” project is a network open to all the organizations in the area that make the assumptions and objectives of the network their own.[2]
The project was funded by the Compagnia di San Paolo through the OPEN Community call. The amount of the loan is not given (Ib.).
The events were supported by Ascom, the association of commercial operators, who contacted and involved its associates.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
- A survey was addressed to the public of Ivrea and distributed during events by each member of the network as well as online. It is not possible to fully understand the demographics of the respondents because a complete report is not (yet) available), but there are a few graphs that are partially available at the moment (17/7/20, see [1]).
- The capacity building laboratory, "Paranoid Ivrea" saw the participation of 20 young people, between 15 and 25 years old, selected by the ZAC! Youth center, a member of the network. The artist, Luca Cristiano from Arteria di Via Palma, participated as an expert designer putting the suggestions of the participants in graphic form. The creator of the event was Marco Peroni.[4]
- According to the organizers, the event "Impossible evenings in via Palma" saw 50-60 participants, on average, at each small appointment.[5] On the whole of the event, around 500 people took part in the free initiatives." For the first time, the restauranteurs of the street joined together by making a common fund, organizing a dinner "under the stars" which was attended by 160 people, all seated and served at the tables."[5]
- The event, "The voices of the time of San Bernardino" involved "a selected public, made up of about forty people, invited to participate confidentially by Ascom."[6] The names of the artists and experts who collaborated are not given.
The advertising methods are not known for any of the activities.
Methods and Tools Used
Capacity / imaging building laboratory is a meeting that in the case under examination saw the participation of a small group (20) of young people. It can take place individually or in subgroups, staging artistic / theatrical or visual forms of expression after discussing a theme of common interest. In this case, the solicitation was the perceived fears, "nightmares", and concerns about the future of the city; they were expressed by the participants, in brainstorming mode and then put into graphic / pictorial form by an artist.
What Went On: Process, Interaction and Participation
The actions follow the following strategies:
1. Map and Detect
The community network has activated an analysis aimed at getting to know the cultural public of Ivrea better, in order to return to all interested organizations useful information to improve their overall work and make it more incisive with respect to the real needs of the territory.
A first set of questionnaires was distributed on different occasions and places, to reach targets as heterogeneous as possible, in terms of age, gender, socio-economic profile, and habits. 1000 questionnaires were collected between June 2019 and June 2020 and it a working team was created for the analysis, processing, and dissemination of the collected data.[1]
The results were published on the online pages of the newspaper, "La Sentinella del Canavese", already a partner of the community network. However, there does not seem to be, as stated, a section dedicated to the project; in fact the contents are not categorized in any menu and are therefore to be found through the query window with previously known keywords.
From a post on the Cittadini Illuminanti website, it is reported that "only a minority of the citizens interviewed (7.2%) declare themselves fully satisfied with the cultural proposal, while 32.5% consider it adequate, 54% partially satisfactory and 6.3% for nothing.”[7] Furthermore, everyone was asked "in which cultural sectors they would invest if they were in the role of the Mayor of the city" (Ib.). The data revealed an "extraordinary balance between the five options" proposed: "cultural events", "educational services", "public cultural services", "restoration of assets" and "new spaces"; this balance was completely unchanged in every age group. It is a sort of proof of maturity by the public of Ivrea as a whole, which still seems to know how to characterize itself for an idea of articulated, organic, far from banal culture (Ib.).
2. Create
The network organized a series of thematic moments of confrontation, which alternate traditional capacity-building paths (on the themes of city-imaging and storytelling) with activities of exercising creativity and co-generation.
2. 1 Thematic workshops
Experts and reference professionals from the cultural and creative industries intervened to make capacity / imaging building tools available to the network and to all participants in the workshops.[1]
2.1.1 Paranoid Ivrea
Ivrea Paranoica is Ivrea's first "laboratory of imagination of the future that Cittadini Illumina(n)ti designed and created," beginning from July 2019.[4]
It was a collective exercise in which to bring out the dreams and ambitions of participants (especially the younger ones), as well as nightmares and fears. Many presented themselves during the Impossible Evenings in via Palma to "tell their darkest omens, while a DJ accompanied them with electronic music soundtracks produced on the spot and the artist Luca Cristiano of Arteria of Via Palma gave their words pictorial form."[4] The activity began on July 26 in the historic center of Ivrea and continued at the ZAC! (a youth cultural center, an important member of the community network) with a group selected from its younger visitors, about 20 boys aged 15 to 25.[4] The method of selecting young people is not given.
The result was a gallery of nightmares and — according to the creator of the activity, Marco Peroni,
"it makes sense to consider even in this dramatic moment for everyone, in which reality has surpassed every fantasy..It is surprising how many of these works anticipated by a few weeks what really happened as a consequence of the Coronavirus pandemic, starting with the suspension of the Carnival, until the collective life shattered in a myriad of forced solitudes.
We believe that meeting, listening and artistically reworking people's fears has a positive and vital value. As a network, we started from the premise that it is the nightmares that we do not express and metabolize that are the most dangerous, those destined to persecute us longer, even in a community. However, the laboratory has maintained a seductive and playful register, even in the severity of certain premonitions. It was a kind of transition from exercise to exorcism" [4]
2.1.2 MateraHub and Santa Marta Workshop
No reports or posts are given on this workshop.
2.2 Events ("The audience is raving")
Engagement activities were carried out in which the public was called to familiarize themselves with the themes developed by the project and to experience the places of the city in a new way.
2.2.1 The impossible evenings in Via Palma
On July 26, 2019, Cittadini Illumina(\)ti helped organize a set of activities in the historic center of Ivrea that involved the traders, craftsmen, and restauranteurs of via Quattro Martiri.
Perhaps "better known in the city as via "Palma", it is certainly part of the most suggestive and rich part of the city's historical references: below the Castle that dominates it imperiously, the heart of the Jewish ghetto where Camillo and Adriano Olivetti were born, via Palma climbs steep and narrow on its ancient paving, overlooked by two women's fashion stores, two trattorias, and more.[5]
The initiative made each exercise, in turn and for half an hour, accessible to all: in one, the participants were taught about the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by reading some large pages of Salvator Gotta and photographic exhibitions, while in another, they deliberated the role of the historical centers in the community's future. In still another, some fascinating pages of Italian, musical and literary counterculture, and so on, were presented, simply inviting rather well-known people in the Eporedian community to try their hand at arguments on which those citizens who have always shed light on the community with their work could be defined as experts. They were chosen based on their commitment, their culture, and their generosity, representing de facto illuminating citizens.[5]
During the evening, the "Paranoid Ivrea" laboratory was also inaugurated , (see above). It also began "to distribute questionnaires for audience mapping."[5]
There was satisfaction for the success of the event, with the belief that it "generated some positive effects: the possibility of still achieving something similar together (thanks to the repeatability of the format) next summer; a turnaround in the availability of establishments to collaborate online, the activation of a story of the historic center for once more in tune with the prestige and charisma of its most authentic cultural heritage."[5]
2.2.2 The Voices of Time in San Bernardino
On September 7, 2019 at 9.30pm, Cittadini Illumina(\)ti organized the first training initiative dedicated to the merchants of Ivrea in the Church of San Bernardino. The show, "Voices of Time" Direction Home — which "tells the life and work of Adriano Olivetti through Bob Dylan's musical repertoire — was held in the presence of a selected audience, made up of about forty people, invited to participate in via reserved by Ascom."[6]
With this initiative, the network community has started to respond to the demand for training of merchants in the face of the growing influx of visitors.
With this first initiative (others are expected to be held in the future), it was intended to begin to respond to a demand for training by the associates, on the industrial and artistic history of the city, the two most visited destinations. Therefore, a theatrical reduction of Giovanni Testori's notable critical essay dedicated to the fresco was also proposed by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti. Titled "Life and Passion of Christ," it was located in the church, the meeting place for the event and proposed at the end of the show to arouse interest in the public, particularly important considering that at least twenty of the participants, despite being from Ivrea, had never been to the Church.[6] The involvement and satisfaction of Ascom made organizers think that the experiment could be repeated in the summer 2020 (general situation permitting) to become in all respects a new and original training model that makes Ivrea's merchants, and new public (never involved in dedicated cultural activities, to date) more enlightened by the city's history and, therefore, enlightening towards visitors.[6]
3. Return
The network intends to activate some technological tools for anyone interested in using the contents produced or integrating them with their own.
3.1 "IVREA18-2096" platform
The idea of the network is to create a reference platform in which the data collected on Ivrea's culture audiences are collected, sorted and aggregated, and in which citizens are allowed to share their visions on the future of the city (Ivrea 2096).
This platform is not yet activated (as of 17/7/2020).
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The project created stimulating follow-up and activities involving key players such as merchants and their membership groups. Its results are not entirely completed, as it is a long lasting process. The effects can be detected in a few years if the process continues.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
Transparency is lacking: the extent of the financing of the Compagnia di San Paolo is unknown, the staff that organizes and coordinates the events is unclear, as is whether they are paid. The survey on the public provides sufficient representativeness with the 1000 questionnaires collected; less precise was the survey of attendance at events. The case is characterized by being a process without authority, in which civil society self-organizes, processes and realizes directly, with the ambition to produce common good for the collective good, for the territory. Therefore, the absence of representatives of the local administration is conspicuous, also considering that the cultural sector, the one concerned, is generally one of the most supported by the public administration.
See Also
Illuminating Citizens - Community Network (Ivrea)
References
[1] Cittadini Illuminanti. Il Progretto. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/il-progetto
[2] Cittadini Illuminanti. La Rete. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/la-rete
[3] Cittadini Illuminanti. Attività realizzate. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/attivita-realizzate
[4] Cittadini Illuminanti. Ivrea paranoica. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/ivrea-paranoica
[5] Cittadini Illuminanti. Le serate impossibili di Via Palma. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/le-serate-impossibili-di-palma
[6] Cittadini Illuminanti. Le Voci del Tempo in San Bernardino. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/le-voci-del-tempo-san-bernardino
[7] Cittadini Illuminanti. EXPLORA_Il pubblico culturale di Ivrea. Retrieved 8/6/2020 from https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/explorail-pubblico-culturale-di-ivrea
External Links
Network of Communities:
- Public Cultural Association-08
- PA Garda Museum
- Zac! - Active areas of citizenship
- Natale Capellaro Foundation and Technologically Museum Laboratory
- The Fifth Enlargement Association
- Cooperative Alce Rosso
- Association Il Contato del Canavese
Illuminating Citizens - https://www.cittadini-illuminanti.org/web/ (ril- 15/7/2020)