Defending culture

"The coronavirus, like all crises, has made the desire for a culture of people and communities grow. At a time in history when billions of people are physically separated, culture is a bond that unites us, that provides comfort, inspiration and hope at a time of uncertainty and anxiety".

- Ernesto Ottone Assistant General Manager for Culture.

CHALLENGE
In addition to this, the need to disseminate artistic/cultural projects is strongly manifested in recent historical and political events, in fact, due to the health situation many of the artistic sectors have suffered not only a sharp slowdown but something much more serious, namely the belief that some of these disciplines are useless, second-rate, that they are something we can not afford, as a society. Well, in our opinion we cannot afford the opposite, that is, to lose them. Some data:

- Milan, April 20, 2020 - The main associations representing the entire music business chain, from live to record companies, and music publishers, today transmitted to Prime Minister Conte and the Ministers of Cultural Heritage and Economy, Franceschini and Gualtieri, a series of interventions highlighting the state of crisis of the entire sector and the need for urgent measures. A sector that, according to data from Italia Creativa collected by EY, is worth almost five billion euros, employing over 169 thousand people".

- "Cinemas and theatres closed for months and now a difficult and confusing reopening. Suspended film productions that are slowly resuming and saving money. Workers in a sector already largely precarious to despair."

■ NORTH/SOUTH CULTURAL DIVIDE 
- "The difference between south and north in terms of quality of the offer, opportunities of fruition, the fluidity of circulation of art and culture remains, and even worsens from year to year. The opportunities for young southerners to be able to train in places of excellence are decreasing, so much so that, alongside the problem of "brain drain", it is urgent to start thinking about, and remedy, the "brains that remain" that risk finding themselves in drying up heath".

■ THE DROP IN CULTURAL CONSUMPTION
- In Italy, there is a progressive erosion of "cultural consumers" and a growing and worrying territorial and geographical divergence of opportunities for cultural enjoyment. These two factors are particularly dangerous because they are strongly interconnected, generating a vicious asphyxiating circularity that wears out the entire sector from within.

The needs to which we will try to respond through this ESC are embedded in the very cracks identified in the challenges we want to address. Some data collected by us, confirm our analysis and show that young people themselves need culture (to use and produce it): 

- The participation of thousands of young people in the campaign launched by #iolavoroconlamusica "to the telematic "cry" have joined in recent days the most disparate exponents of the Italian music scene, from the artists of wider and known to those less known, all to remind (rightly) that even the artistic/musical world deserves the same attention as any other working macrocosm that, in recent months, has been seriously affected by the consequences of the lockdown.

- Culture bonus: "The data say that about 600 thousand people born in 1998 and 1999 have spent more than 163 million euros to buy books, music and tickets for concerts, cinema, theatre, cultural events and museums. Eighty per cent of these 163 million euros, almost 132 million, was spent on books".
 
- Research-based on young people born between the mid-1980s and early 2000s - belonging to the so-called Millennials and Centennials categories, made on the basis of digital research of the fruition of culture tells us that: "in terms of "cultural experience", cultural fruition (attending cinemas, theatres, museums, attending concerts, reading, etc.) seems rewarding for half of the sample, but also desirable both for the enrichment of one's personality and to increase one's social reputation and professional growth".

CULTURAL NEED 
- Culture intrinsically promotes respect for ethnic and cultural diversity. It promotes the different expressions of entrepreneurship to best respond to the existing reality. It stimulates diversification among the actors of the solidarity-based social economy so that all sectors of society are represented and can defend their interests, in particular women and social groups marginalized by the current system
- It stimulates creative and critical innovations and experiences so that they can best contribute to social change.

https://unric.org/it/covid19-unesco-nei-momenti-di-crisi-le-persone-hanno-bisogno-di-cultura/

https://www.remocontro.it/2020/06/28/arte-cultura-e-spettacolo-lavoratori-colpiti-dalla-crisi-del-covid-in-piazza/

https://www.artribune.com/arti-visive/2020/05/consumo-culturale-coronavirus-ricostruzione/

https://www.ilpost.it/2018/06/20/bonus-cultura-editoria-italiana/