Venice in the future for Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta, Venice Art Factory

A Venice open to sharing, a place that continues to embrace multiculturalism to become the European agency for culture: Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta, Venice Art Factory, for #RiscrivereilFuturo

“The more nourished and cohesive the local community is, the more receptive the city will be towards those who arrive and can learn to love it.” The profound thoughts of Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta, contemporary art curators and founders of Venice Art Factory, for the #RiscrivereilFuturo project on the open debate with citizens curated by Venezia da Vivere and the Associazione Piazza San Marco.

Vdv: How do you imagine Venice in the future?

We imagine an open city. More open than before, in a sense, if possible. The rethinking of mass tourism called for by many is necessary. But at times, one can glimpse the underlying thought that the goal is to favor “wealthy tourism,” as if the answer to massification were elitism. Luxury tourist destinations are rarely places full of life and ferment. Venice should remain an interesting place both for the tourist who can afford exclusive experiences and for young people and families who must be mindful of their budget.

The essential thing is that Venice offers a moment of discovery and new awareness. This brings us back to the original sense of the word “tourist”: one who undertakes a tour as a path of growth through encounters, places, and beauty.

Venice possesses the extraordinary quality of being both a small town and a cosmopolitan place, where walking down the street you happen to cross paths with friends and neighbors, and then at a bar, you make the acquaintance of someone from the other side of the world. The more nourished and cohesive the local community is, without wanting to close itself in a reassuring shell, the more receptive the city will be towards those who arrive and can learn to love it. It is essential to understand that the two aspects are not in conflict.

Vdv: What can politics and citizens do for a rebirth of Venice?

Politics could encourage residency by introducing advantageous contractual formulas for specific segments. We are thinking particularly of university students, given that universities are a strength of the city’s fabric. Many are not residents because owners are unwilling to grant multi-year lease contracts due to tax burdens and the risks of non-payment. There should be a tax-advantaged contract that makes students true residents and continues for at least three years after graduation, in order to convert a portion of students into permanent residents. It is they who, entering the job market, will be able to invent professions and entrepreneurial initiatives impossible to imagine now.

On the citizens’ side, there should instead be the entrepreneurial capacity to explore segments neglected until now. To stay within the field of tourism, in our work we often meet artists, designers, curators, and other professionals who express the desire to spend a short period in Venice to work on a specific project. But the offer for this type of semi-residential demand, with stays from a few weeks to a few months, is almost non-existent. Yet these are visitors / temporary residents who bring great enrichment to the city.

Then, existing communities in Venice could be stimulated to become drivers of development. There are large communities of Europeans and Americans who have homes in the city, but why not further activate the communities of Chinese, Bengalis, Ukrainians, Albanians, and Nigerians to invite talents from their countries of origin to study in our universities through scholarships? The economies of those countries are destined to grow more than ours in the coming decades. And the cultural openness of Venice would benefit further.

Vdv: Propose a specific idea in at least one of these areas: environment, residency, work, culture, security, tourism.

We believe the examples above are quite practically oriented. Another specific element concerns the establishment of the entry fee. Why not exploit it to transform it into a communication vehicle? We ask tourists to pay €10; why not simultaneously say that those €10 are valid as a discount for an entry of their choice to a museum, an exhibition, a theater, or a concert? This would link the tourist’s entry even more closely to the cultural offerings the city provides. In this way, a mere tax becomes a service and a moment of communication.

In this way, visibility could also be given, on a rotating basis, to lesser-known cultural sites, which are no less important. Of course, this means allocating a significant portion of the tax to funding culture, rather than other expenditure items.

Another place where, in our opinion, cultural communication should be strengthened is the ACTV waterbus stops. Given their internal structure, they are ideal in Venice for hosting screens without impacting the landscape. In addition to standard advertising spaces, the Municipality could install a screen to give visibility to all the cultural projects taking place in the city at that moment.

There are other initiatives, such as proposals for the creation of special zones in the city, with tax exemptions for the establishment of new activities in the intellectual or artisanal sector, which would certainly be effective. Perhaps more utopianly, it seems to us that there is no actual European agency for culture. We believe it would be appropriate to propose it, and that Venice would have full standing to apply as its headquarters.

Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta, Venice Art Factory, contemporary art curators.

Venice Art Factory is hosting the exhibition by Anthony Corner Lamentation, Flux and an Empty Bladder at SPARC * Spazio Arte Contemporanea until August, Monday to Saturday from 3 PM to 6 PM, in Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco 2828A. www.veniceartfactory.org