Current State of Pop Culture Turin, September, 22 - 27, 2011

1. Cultures meet and listen each other                                                                                                            

Folk culture is a vantage point to reinforce feelings of belonging to the human community. In recent years, UNESCO has promulgated some conventions on strategic issues and key aspects of folk culture, to which this Manifesto refers, specifically the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of October, 17 2003 and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of  October, 20 2005. Provided that an Intangible Cultural Heritage expresses each particular reality, the diversity of cultural heritage is thus crystallized in intercultural dialogue, whose bases are listening to the other and mutual recognition.

2. "Doing" folk culture and maintaining memory is a collective enterprise                                                  

The responsibility of knowledge, preservation and enhancement of folk culture should be considered a personal commitment and a social duty. It should be considered such as a collective commitment to public and private, thus not completely manifest in artistic actions and significant material goods. The "doing-culture” and keeping of its memory are based in fact on the practice of sharing and transmitting the knowledge in everyday life.

3. The good practice of the passage of knowledge                                                                                            

Each generation can and should be a witness and guardian of memory, bringing a dowry to future generations:  the knowledge and practices of personal and collective stories that make up the system viable and recognized by every single human community.

4. The autonomy and continuity of cultural                                                                                                    

An indispensable condition for the Cultural Heritage, in its tangible and intangible forms, is that it can be preserved over time, beyond any economic, political and social change, without losing its central values.
                                                                                                                                                                   

5. Culture and Society                                                                                                                                  

The well-being of a society and individual citizens is not only measured quantitatively in terms of economic development, but also qualitatively, in terms of sharing and participation in a common cultural horizon. For this reason we feel the need to acknowledge the dignity of culture just as much as economics or health. Their implementation requires coordination: it can involve the active forces of the territory, attract new forms of resource procurement and call for the use of new communication forms, to increase the active participation of citizens.

WE COMMITT OURSELVES:

1. To establish a system of territories sharing the foregoing principles and constantly talking to each other,  in order to realize a coordinated national network.                                                                

2. To promote a balance between policies for the protection of artistic, historical, architectural, and the organization and promotion of creativity.

3. To promote systematic policies and to merge them into the networking, taking as granted the principle  that a network is a polycentric based on the reception of others and other cultures.  
4. To recognize the equal dignity of immaterial culture and material culture.
5. To consider the values ​​of culture as inseparable beyond any economic, political and social change.
6. To lead the territories and communities in an open dialogue, so that can come about a continuous exchange of experiences to promote and send cultural resources as a World Heritage for future generations.
7. To identify possible minimum standards for action in the field of culture to which all institutions must match.
8. To consider the policies in support of pop culture as a strategic commitment of government, regardless of the economic possibility to set up ad hoc financial resources.
9. To support economies of scale through a national coordination, where individual activities are the result of joint planning.
10. To achieve participated Archives of memory, with the function of collective enterprises that can be the centerpiece of cultural responsibility and a knowledge-sharing pact between public and private institutions (academics, associations, schools and individuals).
11. To promote the dissemination of the principles contained in the Manifesto, facilitating its inclusion within the programming documents in each territory, so that they become an incentive to national cultural policies and supranational institutions.