TRENT. This afternoon, in the representation room of Palazzo Geremia, the official presentation of the contents of the cultural policy plan for the next ten years was held, in the presence of councilor Elisabetta Bozzarelli, of the two consultants Paolo Dalla Sega and Nahid Aliyari and of Lucio Argano, expert in cultural policies and planning.
A large and varied audiencefrom the main city institutions to the many third sector bodies to the numerous young people, a composition that perfectly reflects the key themes of the new Plan, as well as the open, transversal and dynamic spirit with which – since January – the meetings of the participatory process have been held .
The path was in fact born from the need and desire of the Municipality to meet and explore the changes that are happening in the enjoyment of culture, with a plural and innovative approach. A concrete and operational Plan which, starting from the main reference policies at a global, national and territorial level (from the 2030 Agenda to the PNRR to the programmatic guidelines for the 2020 – 2025 municipal mandate), defines fundamental guidelines and objectives/tools practical, which look at contemporaneity and the themes of our time, without however neglecting the fundamental relationship with memory and territorial identity.
A plan determined to also question the role of the Municipalitywhich emerges not only with a function of subsidiary economic intervention, but also of directing and directing policies, of accompaniment and facilitation, of direct planning and promotion of comparison and networking practices (municipal, provincial, national).
Macro-themes and guidelines
There are four macro themes around which the future of the City will revolve in the next ten years.
(1) Living more culturally: the transformative and regenerative capacity of culture as human and social care. Towards a new notion of culture: less sectorialised and more transversal, in a social and egalitarian dimension and in a tourism-economic dimension;
(2) More nature in culture: against the poly-crisis of our time, human and environmental, climate and energy, new challenges for a new city (the territory and the community that inhabits it). Without ever abandoning fundamental compasses such as the UN 2030 Agenda with the 17 SD Goals and the pillars of the European cultural agendas;
(3) Contemporary Trento: to the large construction sites that will change its physical face, in an enormous redesign of transport and flows, Trento can accompany construction sites of the imagination, new adventures of civic imagination through cultural experience, today enriched with no longer marginal gazes and sensibilities (children, young people, foreigners, women);
(4) More open communities, alive, safe: truly changing, through and through today’s communities which are and must be plural and never singular, open and never closed: alive, therefore safe.
Objectives and tools
There are just as many ambitious objectives, articulated in a dense network of more or less complex tools, to be implemented over the next decade. Starting from spaces and the need to insist on a drive – now increasingly global – which tends towards hybridization and experimentation. From stimulating new forms of use and sharing of existing spaces and cultural times, to carrying out crash tests for old and new spaces, encouraging civic and grassroots creativity. Among the tools, also the choice of allocating the Ex Lettere complex – for some years at the center of the city debate on refunctionalisation – to un open hub for cultural and creative businesses.
The reasoning on resources is also central: the key point will be the revision of the rules for assigning contributionsmeeting emerging trends such as the integration of qualitative parameters in the evaluation of projects, the need to enhance the spontaneous contribution of volunteering, the questioning of the event-based financing system also considering processes, actions and approach activities to the cultural world and forms of public-private collaboration, among which the attention towards cultural and creative enterprises and towards the promotion of new forms of involvement of local businesses in supporting culture stands out, through virtuous experiments such as the establishment of a fund “Culture Alliance”.
A strong turning point will also be determined by the creation of an enabling desk in the Ex Lettere complex with the function of mentoring in training, research, selection and support on opportunities fundraisingbut also on the issues of our time (from environmental sustainability to accessibility) and on specific operations (certificates, certifications, etc.).
Always in line with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda, it is worth mentioning the intention to simplify and digitize procedures, also through the establishment of a dedicated events desk.
In response to the growth of a city that hosts new and increasingly different sensibilities, attention to new citizens and the new needs of an increasingly contemporary Trento is also central. Among others, the protagonists will be young people, through their greater involvement in cultural production and enjoyment, encouraging their protagonism in the management of “dedicated” cultural spaces (for example the Ex Mensa, also in the former Santa Chiara complex).
For a cultural policy that can and must also deal with welfare, it is then essential to activate cultural proposals directly that involve marginal users, promote sustainable lifestyles and mitigate the environmental impact of the staging of events, pay greater attention to the target audiences towards a stable characterization of activities by levels of complexity, activate a specific financing channel for bottom-up proximity initiatives, stimulate relational and sensorial accessibility of existing spaces and those under construction and strengthen dialogue between schools and cultural institutionsalso experimenting with innovative projects.
Last but not least, there is the topic of collaboration. Since the establishment of a permanent cultural consultation with the main cultural institutions that it meets periodically to define annual thematic areas to encourage coordination of the ordinary cultural proposal; from the promotion of integrated communication of initiatives throughout the year, to the establishment of the annual culture conference open to all cultural operators for the annual evaluation of the progress of the Plan, encouraging networking between local realities and openness towards external experiences; from the articulation of calls for small/medium/large entities to encourage rotation and networks to the systematization of new forms of collaboration between grassroots realities and cultural institutions. Each objective will then correspond to monitoring indicators in the short, medium and long term.
The “participatory” path
There were many participants who, in the seven meetings that took place between January and March, tried to answer the questions: What can culture do? Who pays for culture? Trento, how old are you? Where does the city end? and they reflected on the themes “At school for the future” and “Always looking for spaces” together with the numerous guests who, connected from different national and international realities, enriched the debate with important external contributions. Among them, Francesca Bertoglio, project manager of Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023 and Rimini 2026, Roberta Franceschinelli creator and manager of the “Culturability” call as well as program manager at the Unipolis Foundation (Bologna), Alessandro Bollo, director of the Museo del Risorgimento Italiano (Turin), Linda Di Pietro, expert in cultural planning and Chief Cultural Officer of BASE Milano, Lorenzo Micheli founder of CAMPOBASE, curator of the MIM Future School Program and expert in policies for training, orientation and internationalisation. Lastly, Elena Granata from the Polytechnic of Milan. Recordings of the meetings are available on the Municipality’s YouTube channel and on the institutional website, in the section dedicated to the Cultural Plan, to re-listen to the experts’ interventions.
The consultants who are managing the Plan are Paolo Dalla Segasenior consultant, Trentino, professor at the Catholic University of Milan at the Interfaculty of Economics and Letters and Philosophy, member of the Advisory Commission for Live Entertainment – Single Fund for Entertainment of the Ministry of Culture, former board member of the Center Santa Chiara, and Nahid Aliyari, junior consultant, a young person who has been active in the area for years in social orientation and youth leadership projects.
