Bocconi4Bookcity Milano 2021
Bookcity is the cultural event designed to bring together all the actors of Italian publishing, largely based in Milan, around the aim of putting books and reading at the center of urban life, with book events, conferences and presentations all over the metropolis. Ten years after its inception, the time has come to reflect on active cultural policies at the local level and the cultural challenges that Milan currently faces. Bocconi centers its participation in this new edition of Bookcity around the theme of cultural policy, with hybrid presentations, online and in-presence events.
Thursday 18 at 11:30 there will be the online open lecture "Ten years of Bookcity. Cultural policy in action", to be followed at 4:50pm by another English-language lecture, this time by Ezio Manzini, author of Abitare la Prossimità (Living Promixity) who will discuss the experience of Manchester UNESCO Creative City of Literature, and how reading can reduce urban inequality, while promoting a higher level of cultural participation among the citizenry.
Thursday ends at 6pm with an in-presence event in Italian at the Egea bookstore which is entirely devoted to the emancipation of women: "The public space of women". Milan finally has its first public statue dedicated to a woman and another will be unveiled in 2022. Cristina Trivulzio of Belgiojoso and Margherita Hack are two complementary symbols of the women's effort to build a more equitable society that offers equal opportunity to all genders. The round table, organized in collaboration with the City of Milan's Inter-University Research Center on Gender Cultures, aims to discuss the political and symbolic significance of the choice to give the public space back to women, for the public sharing of culturally relevant experiences and values.
Friday 18, at 2:30 pm, the hybrid event in Italian organized by Bocconi and the Municipality of Milan, which is also a UNESCO Creative City for Literature, in collaboration with Egea, titled "Culture as a distinctive element of cities". Here the theme will be the city as engine of social change and the the attractive role it plays both within and without city limits. The UNESCO Creative Cities Network is a famous example of structured collaboration between an international organization and municipal governments. The idea behind the UNESCO Creative Cities Network is to offer opportunities for comparison and exchange for geographically-specific cultural industries, which can exploit their distinctive identity to promote culture-driven economic development. Other examples are Carrara, Parma, and Turin, UNESCO Creative Cities of Crafts and Popular Art, Gastronomy, and Design, respectively.
Bocconi4bookcity 2021 closes with the online event at 6pm "Chatting with Tegamini. Publishing in the era of social media", a dialogue with Francesca Crescentini, a Bocconi graduate known as Tegamini on social media, who will talk about her profession of book blogger, book influencer and content creator. The discussion will shed light on the contemporary publishing landscape, and the new trends and professional skills that are transforming the world of books and reading.
Here is the link to the program