The art of balance#34 | Frank Leenders, how will you communicate?
Frank Leenders (Director General at FIBA Media & Marketing is the 34th guest of “The art of balance/Pandemopraxy”, the initiative launched by Cittadellarte. In his video contribution, Frank Leenders talks about the important role sports might play in the post-Coronavirus as an element of social aggregation, especially team sports like basketball. This episode’s guest also explains how basketball can trigger a social change in the fight against racism: “Let’s make the world a better place through sports”.

How will you communicate?
Dear friends, it’s a true pleasure to contribute to this initiative of the Fondazione Cittadellarte and Michelangelo Pistoletto. It is not more than six months ago that we were with this basketball together at the Basketball World Cup in China. An amazing event, amazing activities and a great partnership which has left a lot of impact in China. China, however, is also, unfortunately, the birthplace, the start, of Covid-19, and as we now look to get out of this tunnel, we realize that sport in general plays an important part. Because sport is not only physical training or mental activation, but it is also a very important piece for society to bring people together especially in a team sport like basketball. Beyond that, we believe the basketball can also contribute widely to society on other fronts, because we are not only coming out of Covid, we also see a lot of changes in the world which centre around the topic of racism. And what we see is that basketball is very universal, it is very global and it is also a sport which is easily accessible. Boys and girls, all around the world, can play and it is very simple to take a ball and bounce the ball. It’s simple rules on the court and also off the court. So in this difficult moment we really hope that the sport of basketball can contribute to that topic, and as we say together with the Fondazione Cittadellarte, basketball and the World Cup, it was: one skin, one language, one culture. So let’s work together and let’s make the world a better place through sports! Thank you.

Frank Leenders, general director of FIBA.