Unipolis Foundation outlines the identikit of the Italian cultural center
Nordic, multidisciplinary, a place of experimentation and artistic production, housed in a historic architectural asset or an abandoned industrial complex. It is the most recent identikit of Italian cultural center dashed by the Unipolis Foundation, Business foundation of Unipol Group, in the light of the study of the realities present in the area.
Four hundred and eighty-one centers investigated, that is to say all the candidates for the announcement culturability last year, the famous program with which the Foundation supports cultural initiatives capable of generating innovation in the territory.
The call, which with the last edition shifted its target from newly founded centers to already operational ones, aims to support the consolidation of places born from processes of urban and cultural regeneration from below, authentic forges of ideas and projects with a high social and civic impact.
Four centers awarded in this new perspective: theUrban Ecomuseum Mare Memoria Viva of Palermo, Farm Cultural Park a Favara, le Greenhouses of the Margherita Gardens of Bologna and Urban Cultural sea in Milan.
The data reported by the 2020 Observatory on the remaining applications speak for themselves, revealing the geographical distribution, the cultural sectors and the sectors of activity and ultimately highlighting the characteristics of the cultural centers of our country.
Interview with Marisa Parmigiani, Director of the Unipolis Foundation and Head of Sustainability of the Unipol Group, for affaritaliani.it
Parmigiani, Unipolis Foundation: “The culture of the fourth leg of sustainability”
To provide us with a clearer picture than the identikit traced thanks to culturability is Marisa Parmigiani, Director of the Unipolis Foundation and Head of Sustainability of the Unipol Group, to whom we first asked about the evolution of the cultural center model in Italy.
“We cannot speak of a real model of an Italian cultural center, and we can see from the percentages identified that they are quite distributed”he explains Marina Parmigiani, identikit data in hand.
“What can we say about these years in which the call has been repeated? We have certainly seen the spread of new cultural-based regeneration practices throughout the country and, above all, we have seen the first experiences change. Experiences that have evolved from a logic focused mainly on the regeneration of the property to more cultural and artistic aspects. We have gone from a dimension in which the regenerated and redeveloped building in which the cultural center was positioned was fundamental for the definition of identity and the cultural proposal of the same, to a dimension whose identity choice has gradually gone beyond even the aspects strictly linked to the ‘building. Another element that we have seen evolve in recent years is the temporal dimension of the practice, previously almost episodic, that is, we witnessed interventions in a defined time frame, the so-called temporary reuse of places. Today, however, cultural centers are increasingly becoming an actor in the territorial development in which they are located. They become not so much artistic-cultural centers, but real socio-cultural centers, actors of social innovation ”.
The photograph taken by the Foundation’s 2020 Observatory shows how geographically the cultural centers are mainly located in the Northern regions (45%), followed by those present in the South and on the islands (31%) and those of the central regions (24%). An atypical geographical difference compared to the data collected in past years, which instead highlighted a more considerable presence in the South.
“The geographical gap of the cultural centers proposed has changed a lot with this last call, of which we have changed the beneficiary “, he clarifies Parmigiani. “We have gone from a logic of support of ‘start up’ of the cultural center, therefore of nascent subjects, to one of support of centers that have been in existence for at least two years. This has led to more applications from the cultural centers of the North than those of the South, despite the history of culturability that has always seen a significant predominance of applications from the South. If we analyze the individual cases and the characteristics that have made some of these resilient centers, transforming them from bearers of practices and experiences to real social actors, the relationship with public administration played an important role. We realized that where the public administration has been able to support the paths of these centers, accompanying them and in some way becoming one of the enabling subjects, the support public policies have ensured that many more centers in the North survive.
An emblematic case in this sense is that of Puglia, where with a series of specific initiatives such as Bollenti Spiriti, the Region has worked a lot on the development of a start-up ecosystem with a social value, this has meant that the richness of the proposals Apulian will be reconfirmed also in 2020 “.
Another point touched upon with Dr. Parmigiani, formerly Head of Sustainability within the Unipol Group, was the ability of cultural centers to impact from the point of view of sustainability social, environmental and economic on the territory to which they are linked.
“With the Unipolis Foundation we have chosen to give life to culturability and to have an area of intervention in culture starting from the theme of sustainability”, he says Parmigiani. “We believe the sustainability has four legs, not only the three linked to the environmental, social and economic aspects. The fourth leg is that of the culture, because as one of the latest UN publications on the contribution of culture to the achievement of the 2030 goals has shown, it is an enabling factor for sustainable development. So how do these cultural centers manage to impact from the point of view of sustainability? They are able to do this because they are more and more actors of social innovation and at the same time they are able to implement three dynamics. First of all they succeed in redistribute value in the territory where they are located, they are local based, therefore strictly connected to the territory, which bring good practices from the outside. We are talking about centers that know how to be online, that have both a national and international look and bring new stimuli and ideas to the territory. From this point of view, cultural centers are heralds and bearers not only of new knowledge, but also of new experiences.
Secondly, through culture we introject our limits and consequently learn to live the places we find ourselves in and to occupy our space on earth in a different way. The UN document offers interesting insights into the transmission of content through culture, art and experiences. We could give ourselves texts, regulations to understand how to behave to protect the planet, but we can never be truly effective as is a theatrical performance that makes us protagonists of the experience.
Finally, culture has an enabling dimension not only for the community, but for it community relationship. The fact of being a habitable space, accessible and passable by people, is the origin and source of community creation. In the next Safety Report that we will publish there is a very interesting data to take into consideration. This year, due to the pandemic, we have not attended the places of culture and the structured places of the construction of thought, and therefore we have lost in sociability. The data in the report show a decline in social and civic engagement, because the two are absolutely connected. Being culturally impoverished also means becoming impoverished in comparison with others and no longer experiencing sharing.
Being cultural centers means being places that one passes through, open centers where generations meet. This is not the Opera House, which is a place of culture that provides for a certain type of behavior and is closed, for example to children or less well-off people, the cultural center is an open place to which everyone has access, a place in which everyone is confronted and contaminated “.
“Pre-pandemic, we decided to adopt this new logic because we had seen one in our country season had ended, and it was the season of emergence “, continues Parmigiani. “The quality, variety and ability of the call for proposals was becoming impoverished, but because the phenomena in the territories were being impoverished, because what had to emerge had emerged. Our being in community with cultural centers, with those who won and with those who attended the training courses of culturability, had highlighted the need to consolidate and of to grow up.
We conducted a thorough investigation of the impact assessment of the announcement and the conditions of evolution of the centers, and we realized that there was not only a problem of lower quality of the new proposals, but at the same time also a huge need for managerial consolidation, management e strategic centers that in the meantime were born. Our choice was therefore to help and continue to accompany the already existing centers, in particular those that are located outside the large urban centers and places of reflection and thought. Because to grow, there is an increasing need for discussion and support ”.