– Press Release from the Cultural Supply Chain of the City of Foggia –
What city are we in?
“If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change” it is certainly an overused quote but completely appropriate for the City of Foggia, if you look at the current management of the culture sector.
In a normal city, realities like those of Cultural supply chain they shouldn’t write press releases like this: they should, instead, be able to dedicate themselves to production, creativity and artistic exchanges. Instead, here we are again, provoking uncomfortable reflections on unfulfilled announcements and disappointed expectations.
At the dawn of the installation of the new Administration, there were many promises of a turning point, proclamations regarding the culture to be lived as the foundation of civic sense, an instrument of integration and development of legality. Much was expected, especially after the meetings with the then candidate for mayor and around four meetings with the current Councilor for Culture, including one during a formal hearing in the culture commission.
A management of the objectives and activities of the Department of Culture was expected to be imagined together with the operators of the sector, structured on the basis of shared and clear rules, as requested for years by many and as also stated in the electoral campaign by all the groups policies.
From a more strictly tangible point of view, various meetings with members of the new administration seemed to have generated fruitful listening and substantial programmatic agreements.
To name just two:
- An in-depth study of the current “Regulations for the disbursement of contributions intended for the carrying out of cultural and entertainment activities”, approved by resolution of the Council Commission with the powers of the City Council n. 5 of 01/26/2023, in order to improve its weak points, already analyzed by the Cultural Supply Chain (especially on the occasion of the Permanent Table held at the Academy of Fine Arts).
- The Municipality of Foggia would have personally organized the subsequent Permanent Tables on Culture and Entertainment, open to all citizens, on the model of those organized so far by the Cultural Supply Chain.
What we see today, however, is:
- The “Regulations for the disbursement of contributions…” it was never discussed or reviewed;
- Not only, the Regulation was even disregarded in that only truly agreeable point, i.e. the one in which it establishes that the activities financed by the culture sector must be chosen on the basis of a public notice, to be published by March 31st of each year.
To date, no notice has been published and it is not clear how to present proposals for the realization of cultural activities to the Department, nor what criteria will be used to accept or reject them. We do not want and cannot accept that cultural projects will return to being that ancient memory of monocratically directed and managed proposalsbehind closed doors by who knows what competent commission, or (worse) selected on the basis of absolutely discretionary rules, without an open and public discussion with those who work in the sector and without long-term cultural objectives.
- Finally, the Municipality has still never organised, as promised several times, any Permanent Table; therefore, the desired moment of public meeting between institutions and citizens on the topic of culture was not achieved.
All this brings us back to past Administrations, a gray memories that we thought we could forget, from which the present one does not seem to be distinguished, except in the proclamations.
It is, therefore, the intent of Cultural Supply Chain of the City of Foggia resume the organization of the Permanent Tables on its own, with the bitter awareness that, in a normal city, as well as in an ideal city, sector operators should not be called upon to fight personally every day for participatory, collaborative management, governed by fair and shared rules. The Supply Chain has always demonstrated that it does not seek favoritism or shortcuts for profitable tasks and has always taxed itself for the collective objective. All this seemed simply unfair then and seems unfair, even more so, today.
We ask to be understood and listened to, not to have to spend our lives and creativity without tangible and lasting results.
To conclude, we also learned about the methods used to organize such an ideologically particular and important event as May Day, and we note that the institutions did not consider it necessary to ask for any contribution, intervention or discussion from those who fight for awareness and unit of the cultural sector since 2020. We find it paradoxical to treat the dignity of work while ignoring paths which, however, appeared enlightening and tracing during the electoral campaign.
On this occasion, the Supply Chain announces its seventh Permanent Table on May 24, 2024, at 4.30 pm, in the hall Locus Mirabilis c/o Libreria Fumettosmania, in Via Bari n. 18, in Foggia.
Operators in the sector, intellectuals, representatives of institutions and citizens will participate. Free entry to all while places last.
END PRESS RELEASE
