The International Festival of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the Talking Places® “The World in Florence” reaches its second edition, and it is a great pleasure to welcome you all to the Monumental Complex of the Basilica of Santa Croce, a significant cultural site in Florence.

The Festival of the Talking Places® “The World in Florence” is a unique opportunity to meet, exchange and train on the issues of heritage as a means for peace, environmental sustainability and social cohesion. The Festival offers a panorama of hybrid events (in person and online) in the setting of the Monumental Complex of the Basilica of Santa Croce. The Festival offers citizens, especially Tuscan high school students, a knowledge exchange with groups of university students, local administrators and experts from all over the world as part of the international academic network of the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation and its Life Beyond Tourism–Travel to Dialogue Movement.

The Festival presents diverse cultural expressions of places, displayed in interactive panels and described by young people in the presence and with the help of world heritage experts.

The Festival brings together outstanding personalities from the international debate on issues related to the use of cultural heritage. Personalities include Mounir Bouchenaki, special advisor of Director General UNESCO and honorary president of the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation; Francesco Bandarin, architect and assistant director general of UNESCO for Culture (2010–2018); Joseph King, senior director of ICCROM; and Jean-Louis Luxen, former secretary general of ICOMOS.

With their active participation in the Festival, organizations testify to their endorsement of the activities of culture and peace awareness raising that the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation has pursued for many years. Patronizing organizations include the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs, UNESCO, ICCROM, ICOMOS, the Tuscany Region and the City of Florence.

The Festival of Talking Places® “The World in Florence” is an unmissable appointment of excellence that engages young generations, local communities, companies and experts of reference in a proactive dialogue, tracing future scenarios and good practices, so heritage can concretely represent a vehicle of territorial self-awareness and hospitality, with respect for diversity and inclusiveness, as well as social and environmental development. This dialogue can lead to a new model of territorial management, attitude to travel and educational recommendations for new generations.

 

The 2022 edition marks the formalization of the Talking Places® programme as a strategic and practical application to fulfil the aforesaid Festival’s commitment, which recalls a sense of social responsibility of all local communities towards their own territory, allowing visitors and participants to virtually get to know it through their eyes, thus establishing an interaction between resident and traveller communities that goes far beyond mere tourism.

We want to respond to the most diverse needs of those who work in the territories (e.g. public administrations, local authorities, companies and civil society in general), promoting awareness of the actors who live in the territories and serve as the territories’ historical custodians. These actors have a moral duty to protect and enhance the interpretation and presentation of a territory’s history.

Our goal for the five-year period 2021–2025 is to build a solid basis for disseminating the methodology and implementation of Talking Places® in 100 countries on 5 continents.

This year, we propose two example cases that highlight how the Talking Places® programme is much more than a tool for travellers and meets the contemporary needs of dematerialisation and environmental sustainability.

The first case focuses on the narration of the figure of Father Ernesto Balducci through an itinerary of places close to him. The project is carried out in collaboration with the Balducci Foundation on the centenary of his birth and ideally traces the most significant moments in his life between the Maremma, Florence and Rome, in 11 stages.

The second case is represented by the digitization and enhancement of a nucleus of 37 tabernacles out of over 1,200 in Florence. It is an initiative in collaboration with the Friends of the Florentine Museums and Monuments—Committee for the Decoration and Restoration of Tabernacles—which is part of a complex project of restoration and return of the works to Florence. At risk of getting lost amid the immense Florentine artistic and cultural heritage, this case highlights the importance of these tabernacles and their rich history.

These examples show that Talking Places® can give voice to many projects already active in the most diverse areas, including house museums and a myriad of other small and large hidden realities.

In this sense, Talking Places® can become a tool for enhancing community identity, highlighting the social, environmental and governance commitment and strengthening the government’s presence and role in its territories.

A great example of this is the case of B&B Hotels Italy, an international chain with more than 600 hotels in Europe and 51 in Italy. B&B Hotels has welcomed the Talking Places® programme in its CSR policy, and today, within selected Italian structures (Florence, Rome, Naples, Bolzano, Verona, Milan, Cortina, Palermo and Trieste), guests can discover the city starting with the information available in the hotel through an interactive panel that communicates with smartphones.

Therefore, Talking Places® is not simply a system of interactive panels equipped with NFC tags and QR codes but represents something deeper that starts from the introspection and analysis that the territories (by their community) must necessarily perform to talk about themselves.

Additionally, Talking Places® is a useful tool to improve organizational flows within the territories, which invites the actors involved to explore their places from the inside, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses and determining what works and what needs improvement—a real owner analysis of territorial marketing.

The 2022 Festival programme is full of events that are divided into three areas of discussion:

New Concept of Heritage: On the 50th anniversary of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, it is possible to deepen the changes that have occurred to the concept of heritage over the last few decades. What are the new meanings and what are the new cultural policies that aim at the inclusion of other concepts and other uses of heritage?
Heritage for Peace: Recent global conflicts have severely damaged people, natural and cultural heritage, economies and local identities. We must practice intercultural dialogue to learn, know, welcome and support diversity. The communication of places in this process plays a fundamental role. What can heritage do to prevent conflicts between peoples?
Heritage for the Planet: Cultural heritage and traditional knowledge have developed with respect and cooperation for the environment in the long term. Since the industrial revolutions, mankind has begun to model natural systems according to his interests without considering the repercussions. Currently, despite growing widespread awareness, market rules prevail over respect for the environment. What is the power of culture and heritage to change our choices and habits?

On November 16, we offer two “educational games” for high school students, coordinated by ICCROM, on the themes of heritage for peace and for the environment. Subsequently, Paolo Iabichino will offer a lectio magistralis that will lead him to dialogue with young people on the theme “Travel for social, not social for travel”, analysing the phenomenon of travel bloggers and influencers, who risk conveying a dangerously superficial idea of travel.

This will be followed by the speech of the Italian Touring Club by Fiorenza Frigoni, director of the Touring Academy, and Prof. Margherita Azzari, president of the AIIG Tuscany section and vice-president of the Italian Geographic Society, individuals who recognize the importance of young people and care for them and their training. They will help us discover the NATIVI project and lead us to the discovery of the TCI Travel Archive.

November 17 and 18 represent the Festival programme’s core, as attendees will see presentations (in person or online) of the Talking Places® by local communities (e.g. universities, public administrations, cultural institutions) of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Italy, Lithuania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Taiwan. We will also offer a special section dedicated to Ukraine.

These presentations will be interspersed with the following:

A focus on issues relating to the future of heritage, with high-level speeches moderated by Francesco Bandarin, 2010­–2018 assistant director general UNESCO for Culture (November 17).
Two round tables organized in collaboration with ICCROM will address a) the relationship between climate crisis and heritage and how heritage is adapting and mitigating the impacts of change and b) the implications of heritage in building sustainable peace. These talks will be moderated by Joseph King, senior director of ICCROM, and Aparna Tandon, senior programme leader of ICCROM.

With great pleasure, the Festival will close with a concert of the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra (in collaboration with the Honorary Consulate of Poland for Tuscany and the Polish Embassy in Rome) to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the death of the Polish composer Józef Rufin Wybicki, author of the “Mazurka of Dąbrowski”, the Polish national anthem.