International Festival of Folk Oral Culture

The Festival of Folk Oral Culture is dedicated to the transmission of knowledge and comes from the awareness of living in a society that expresses the need to seek new models of sociability. The new generetions look with attention and interest to the rituals and the feast of ancient memory and on them is focused the reflection on the relationship between past and present conduct by the Italian Network of Folk Culture.

The days of the festival are the performing moment for the network: institutions, associations, schools, researchers, and volunteers from all over Italy come together and bring examples of their cultures that have as a common denominator the care of community. Projects that represent an attempt to restore a social relationship deteriorated and individualizing. During the Festival the projects and the people interact, mingle, trying to figure out how to replicate the best initiatives and good practices in every part of the territory. An example is "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", an initiative started from Turin and that is now present in over ten cities and continues to spread. Or as is happening with the on line project Participated Archive, started with the gift of the personal library of Professor Tullio De Mauro, and that, with the help of a Smart Phone App, will continue to be implemented through research activities realized by schools and with the help of people of the territory.

We would like that the testimonies and the stories we told during the festival were the "good seeds" that the network put in the ground every year, and with more and more frequency, we see reappear in public policies and in major cultural events: a sign that the culture is "contagious" and it may have a role in social issues.

Our festival wants to support an idea of folk culture in motion, that respects the past and makes memory alive as something material that can interact, even through the help of new technologies, with the complexity of the present.

The Festival of Folk Orality, in 2011, was awarded the bronze medal of the Senate, it obteined the acceptance of the Presidency of the Republic and the patronage of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy.

Let's raise up Italy 2014

#TiriamoSulItalia

This year, as in past editions of the festival, will take to the streets music, songs, games, stories of the Witnesses of Folk Culture and all those new ways we have knew during last year of sharing and to manage the common good. Particular attention has been given to the transmission of rituals, festivals and best practices to new generations, with the knowledge that the transit generates contamination and therefore a process of appropriation and change.

During this edition we would like to compare best actions and practices that the actors locally implement in its territory. Projects ranging from sharing items and services through barter, to new ways of thinking and doing community. An example is the social street project in Bologna, an informal group spontaneously formed in order to benefit from the increased social interaction (establishing bonds of trust, sharing needs, exchanging expertises, knowledge, pursuing collective projects of common interest).

In the days of the festival there will also music and dancing shows, thematic workshops and a final concert with Ambrogio Sparagna. For the first time in the square there will be also an open air library, to visitors will be offered the opportunity to learn about the realities of the Network, to relax with a book or browse the precious books donated to us by Tullio De Mauro.

In 2014 we will try to tell Italy in its rich cultural complexity made of traditions of the Italian Cultural Heritage: the rituals fire of May, the devotional processions, the anthropomorphic masks, as well as a rich collection of texts of the Divine Comedy transcribed in many Italian dialects.

The purpose is to tell the other Italy, the stubborn and hardworking one, made up of people who work to enhance and promote the vast repertoire of beauty and history that characterizes our Peninsula. Those who are able to raise up Italy and that often we meet during our every day work as a network. We strongly believe that the passion that these people put in their work in support of culture may be not only a beautiful example, but also a way to inspire all other people.

We invite you to come to visit us. You can share with us stories and ideas on how to raise up Italy. Our web radio will be in Piazza Carlo Alberto in Turin to collect opinions and testimonials. And you: in what do you trust? What are the public things that work? How are you contributing to the common good?

 All the show and activities are for free

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