Rights, environment, work: what the Repubblica delle Idee workshops are and how to participate

Down from the stage, no distance between the speaker and the listener. “Because listening is passive and produces nothing, instead shared participation with the public always leads to great things. At least to respect for everyone’s opinions and to confront”. Welcome to the new formula of the Republic of Ideas, which returns to the city from Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 June. While in piazza Maggiore politicians, journalists, national and international guests will take turns on the stage and in piazza Santo Stefano the music for the youngest will take off, the four new workshops designed by Maurizio Travaglini are a real experiment of active citizenship that will catapult the public in the elaboration of a possible tomorrow. As the title of this edition indicates, “Let’s challenge together a future in the balance”.

Palazzo Re Enzo and Palazzo d’Accursio are the spaces chosen for the interactive workshops, developed by the team that works with Travaglini, made up of about twenty graphic artists, designers, musicians, historians and researchers. For FutureLab and the Town Halls of Tomorrow, everything must be horizontal and democratic, including the organization of space. No podiums, but all seated around round tables for a maximum of six people. Whiteboards to fill, cubes to sit on, ideas to circulate, contributions to manage thanks to the facilitators that Travaglini has put in place for each group. “Our task – explains the consultant who already brings this type of experience all over the world, from Davos to Harvard – is to give shape to ideas”. Said like this, it seems all theory, but there is nothing more concrete than words.

FutureLab’s guests will be Stefano Boeri and Riccardo Staglianò on June 16, Carlo Petrini and Marco Cattaneo on June 17 and Luciano Floridi with Beniamino Pagliaro on 18. In this case, at Palazzo Re Enzo, Travaglini himself will distribute the interventions between the public and guests . “Here there are no observers and observers, we analyze the different perspectives, put them on the table and try to shape our tomorrow, we begin to see how it manifests itself through the discussion of major issues”. They are work, the environment and new technologies. In the Town Halls of Tomorrow we talk about justice, rights and more about the environment. Also at Palazzo Re Enzo, there will be Ilaria Cucchi and Carlo Bonini (16 June), the LGBT activist Pietro Turano (17) and Diletta Bellotti, known for her battles against agromafies (Saturday 18). “In an era in which the future is no longer just a certainty of progress – explains Travaglini, the Town Halls are an experiment of participatory citizenship to discuss the decisions we must make today to help create the world of generations to come”.

Lo Spazio dei dilemmmi is also a bet with the public. At the center of the meeting there is a great question, a thorn for our consciences: freedom or necessity, making war or making peace, writing right or true things, remembering or forgetting, finite or infinite. The audience will be divided into two groups, either here or there. In the center, the reflections of Vito Mancuso, Michele Serra, Francesco Piccolo, Michela Marzano and Massimo Cacciari. More traditional is the last format, the one called The Writers’ Club, even if, even in this case, it will not be face-to-face meetings. Palazzo d’Accursio will enter the world of Paolo Di Paolo, Veronica Raimo, among the seven names for the final of the Premio Strega 2022, Fumettibrutti and Djarah Kan, Jonathan Bazzi, Marcello Fois and Alessandra Sarchi, Georgi Gospodinov with Wlodek Goldkorn and Nadia Newfoundland. All appointments, except those in the two squares, must be booked on repidee.makeitlive.it.