City equals culture

What is the role of culture in redeveloping a city? We are also talking about future challenges for a city like Rome, in competition with the world’s major capital cities.
For a city such as Rome, culture is fundamental, as it is for the whole country. This is not just because of what it has represented, worldwide, for centuries, but because of how its role in this sector has been unfolding over the past five years. Actually, it has changed radically. From a city-museum, Rome is now a multifaceted hotbed of activity, constantly in artistic ferment. This process has often involved the suburbs and outlying area to a greater or lesser extent. As far as we’re concerned the essential thing was to work on a principle: to provide a high quality cultural offer but also make it as accessible as possible. This was a challenge that I think we’ve managed to win. For this administration, access to culture is a democratic objective, as we firmly believe that this will help improve the quality of life for the city and its community. This is why we have worked non-stop, to satisfy a niche public as well as a more general one. To do this we created opportunities for artists and space for comparison and discussion, we have redeveloped the facilities where culture is experienced first hand – and we haven’t finished yet. All this is with a view of creating a synergy, where the top priority is certainly a concept of “reinforced” culture, but most of all, a policy of social inclusion, so that nobody is excluded from the beautiful, fascinating things going on in the city. In a way, this was our challenge: to develop and change, making sure that these changes would improve people’s lives, improve their wellbeing and live up to their expectations. In this sense, all the great events have helped (and are still helping) to “mould” that concept of a friendly, shared community that can “live” Rome to the full, offering an extremely wide public the chance to experience another, more complex perception of public areas and culture, but a perception that is within everyone’s reach.

Which forces have you galvanised in a large, complex city like Rome, which now make it Italy’s cultural capital 365 days a year?
Everything we do is designed to keep economic growth and social cohesion together, and at the heart of our decisions there’s always a way of working, collaborating and “consulting”, moving forward together: the Executive Council, the Municipal Council in tandem with the business world, trade associations, social forces and various civil organisations. No single project could have the desired effect unless it was included in a context in which the top priority is the shared vision of a city, a strong sense of community, a path to development which becomes reality because it increases the level of social cohesion. What we want is to create a “system”. We have a broad concept of what an executive class should be. In terms of economic growth, the results are plain to see. Rome, it has often been stressed, is a city that generates wealth. And it does so at a pace that is much, much faster than the national average.

How is it possible to create culture “for everyone” when unfortunately we tend to think that culture belongs to an élite?

By keeping in mind the sweeping changes that are going on. Rome is a city that has changed radically, just as people’s needs and desires have changed. These are the reasons why Rome has managed to stage those large-scale events that make it famous internationally: New Year’s Eve in the city’s squares, the huge concerts at the Colosseum and Piazza di Siena, where the musical experience and scenic backdrop each add their own magic to the event, or the highly successful Opera in Piazza del Popolo, which had the important benefit of revealing an exciting, popular form of entertainment to the general public. Then there’s Estate Romana, which this year will include large concerts by Madonna and Bob Dylan, and first and foremost La Notte Bianca. Next September 8th and 9th, this event will double in size due to the huge success of previous years, and the demand not only of native Romans but also the multitude of tourists who come to Rome to experience this kind of event. This is another reason why Rome has transformed itself into an enormous stage all year round, a place where events are also an opportunity to meet different types of audience and different age groups, while keeping in mind the need to broaden our outlook towards those members of society who are often excluded from producing culture or sharing leisure experiences. As I said, the idea is to make culture available for all, as a condition of social growth and therefore economic development. The efforts made by the city council increased cultural consumption by 10% in the decade between 1990-2000 alone, an absolute record in cultural tourism, now more than one-third of the whole tourist industry.

Can culture really help the economic growth of a city by having an impact on the use of services like public transport, bars and restaurants…?
There’s no doubt about it. We should never forget that there has been an enormous promotion and increase in production, to the benefit of the policy of social inclusion, in terms of the economy and tourism, not just the specific increase linked to showbusiness. Let’s take the figures from the Italian Exchange Office, on expenditure by foreign tourists in the first three months of 2006, which was 948 million euros in the province of Rome compared to 800 million euros for the same period last year, an increase of 18.5%. In the same period at national level, there was a slight drop, 4,983 million euros compared to 5,021 euros for the first quarter of last year. This is just one of many examples we can give.

Give us an example of accessible culture: a book, film or piece of music that you were particularly struck by.
Recently, I was very impressed by a book written by Javier Cercas, “La velocità della luce” (“The speed of light”), a book that deals with delicate and dramatically relevant issues such as war and the search for memories. The book tells the story of a friendship between the narrator – a young Catalan who works in an American university – and his colleague Rodney Falk, a taciturn Vietnam veteran, a cultured man with secrets he cannot reveal. Rodney suddenly disappears, and then the young Catalan begins a search that leads him to discover the letters from Vietnam, given to him by Rodney’s father. Those letters explain the full drama of Rodney’s experience in the army, first the horror and then the absorption of horror, even the sense of power that killing gives him. But this book is not just a war story, although war obviously takes up a lot of space. It’s the story of a man thrown into battle at the age of twenty. He sees the horrors of war, experiences the trauma of coming home only to discover that “nobody ever comes back from Vietnam”, the trauma of having wasted his life. This journey into the past, into memories, leads to a discovery of the more dramatic side of a life ruined by war. So that we never forget.