Del Corno writes to Draghi: as a first measure reopen all cultural places

Milan City Council Culture Councillor Filippo Del Corno has written an open letter, published in Il Foglio, to the Prime Minister in charge, Mario Draghi, asking him to reopen all cultural venues as his first measure should he succeed in forming a government.

“I would like to propose to you,” Del Corno writes after premising that at the moment, of course, it is impossible to predict what the path and composition of the government that Draghi is charged with forming will be, “to take, as a possible first act of your government, a crucial measure for the rebirth of the community of our fellow citizens, the implementation of which does not require any particular economic effort: I ask you to arrange for the resumption of cultural activities in Italy. I ask you for a planned, coordinated and non-reversible resumption, short of new dramatic health emergencies, affecting all places where all forms of cultural expression are produced, protected, disseminated and shared: open, in compliance with all the indications of scientific authorities, museums and picture galleries, libraries and cultural centers, theaters and cinemas, according to a gradualness whose need is evident and can no longer be postponed and fragmented by the provisional nature of the assignment of risk bands of the different regions.”

“Statistical evidence,” Del Corno continues, “demonstrates how by now the places of culture are the safest from the point of view of the measures necessary to contain contagion, and in all cities, starting with Milan, concrete and measurable data show how the affluence to these places does not determine a load of overcrowding to the public transport system really incident in terms of an increase in the elements of risk. If many have been the deprivations we have had to get used to in order to counter the spread of the virus, the most enduring one is precisely that of cultural experience, whose absence from the horizons of Italians’ everyday life risks taking on the contours of chronicity, despite the efforts deployed during the pandemic by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.”

The proposal to reopen also concerns the possibility of returning museums to open on holidays. According to Milan’s councillor for culture, reopening as the first government act would ultimately be “a very simple and at the same time very strong sign of the will to identify cultural participation as an inalienable right and a founding principle of democratic society.” “If you want to trust culture as the first engine of rebirth,” Del Corno concludes, “you will act in deep harmony with the best history and the most evident identity of the nation you have been called to govern.”

Photo: left Filippo Del Corno, right Mario Draghi

Del Corno writes to Draghi: as a first measure reopen all cultural places

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