July 29 and 30 in Rome is G20 Culture: workers will demonstrate

For the first time in Italy, the G20 Culture G20 will be held on July 29 and 30: culture ministers from the twenty G20 countries will gather in Rome to discuss some of the most pressing issues affecting culture around the world. Specifically, ministers from the world’s twenty largest economies will gather to talk about protecting cultural heritage from illicit trafficking and climate change, the role of culture in education and research, and creative cultural industries. The G20 Culture will begin Thursday at 7 p.m. with a ceremony at the Colosseum, during which there will also be a chance to celebrate the arena’s reconstruction project, an 18.5 million euro plan.

After celebrations, concerts and dinners, the work of the summit will begin on Friday, July 30 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Palazzo Barberini, which just like the Colosseum will be closed to the public. At the end of the various sessions, the Final Declaration of the G20 Culture Ministers will be signed and adopted: a scant seven hours of debates (before breaks) will thus produce a document shared by a political elite, without the involvement of those who deal with culture on a daily basis, since the summit will not discuss workers’ conditions, museum conditions, tourism and other crucial situations at the center of debate around the world, especially in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

In the face of the problems plaguing the cultural sector, the Mi Riconosci association and the USB union, together with many other associations and realities in the sector, have organized a demonstration and an assembly, open, as the organizers are keen to emphasize, to recount the real state of the cultural heritage and those who work in it, to work out shared proposals and directions that will lead to a radical paradigm shift. We cannot stand for a minister to boast about a revitalization of the sector and a leadingItaly, while archives and libraries close due to staff shortages, outsourced workers of museums and archaeological parks see their salaries drop even more, and cultural services collapse in quality and quantity due to the collapse of tourism, declares Flavio D. Utzeri, archaeologist and activist of Mi Riconosci. According to the promoters, the choice of the Colosseum is “emblematic of a toxic idea of heritage management: characterized by outsourced services granted as an exception for the past 20 years, with the bulk of the revenues ending up in a few pockets, it sees a concentrated investment on thearena, useful to transform it into a place of exclusive shows to favor a ticketing that will always be granted to private companies.” For this reason, Utzeri concludes, “we have decided to take to the streets and claim the right to bring our demands to the Italian and international cultural debate.”

“The Union of Basic Trade Unions,” says Enzo Miccoli of USB, “has been denouncing and mobilizing for many years against a creeping but constant privatization of the entire sector of culture and entertainment, objects of a progressive dismantling of their public nature and vocation, while the doors have been opened to private financial investors who have put a rent on an asset, the cultural one, that belongs to everyone.”

Alongside the need to oppose the G20, the purpose of these two days, the organizers let it be known, will also be to build a common path to continue to address the situation that weighs on the Italian and international cultural system: in fact, the invitation to participate is extended to anyone who wants to enrich the struggle of cultural workers with critical looks and constructive proposals. The following have already joined the mobilization: Associazione Nazionale Archivistica Italiana, Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, Italia Nostra, Art Workers Italia. Bianchi Bandinelli Association, Autorhanizzati/e Spettacolo Roma, Italian Association of Museum Educators, C.L.A.P - Chambers of Autonomous and Precarious Work and many others. To join you can write to miriconosci.beniculturali@gmail.com.

The realities adhering to the Beyond the G20: Without Culture No Future initiative will make their voices heard with a garrison in Largo Gaetana Agnesi on Thursday, July 29, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., which will be followed by public assemblies and debates from 3 to 7 p.m., with many guests (academics, journalists, officials, trade unionists) from all over the country. This will be followed on the morning of Friday, July 30, by a press conference at the Italia Nostra headquarters (Via Liegi, 33), where organizers will announce results and next steps of the mobilization. The invitation to participate is extended to all those who believe in the social and civil value of culture: against the lack of adequate investment, against the lack of recognition of professionalism and skills, against the pursuit of profit for the benefit of a few, for a culture of all and for all.

July 29 and 30 in Rome is G20 Culture: workers will demonstrate

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