Cittadellarte’s work to trigger a responsible social transformation carries on: next in its programme – from 24th to 26th January – is Rome’s Rebirth Forum, the first organized in the capital. The Art of Demopraxy will be the key to the whole process, which aims at identifying sustainable projects for the organizations active on the Roman territory. The demopractic method adopts the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda to define the main fields of action in connection with the needs of the territory; it develops as a cognitive, planning, participatory and performative instrument structured in three operative phases (Mapping, Forum and Working Sites*1). The format of the Rebirth Forum proposes and activates a dynamics of commitment in which everybody is called to participate in first person, with the awareness that they are invested with social responsibility in the organizations they belong to. Cittadellarte has organized the event at (and with) the MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art with the collaboration of Roma Capitale (Cultural Growth department) and Azienda Speciale PALAEXPO. The initiative is also supported by ASviS, Alleanza per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile, and ROMABPA, Roma Best Practices Award.

Works will start in the afternoon of 24th January at via Nizza 138 in Rome: a hundred participants representing as many organizations will be sitting at the Third Paradise work tables and operate to identify sustainable practices and projects for the realities active on the territory of the city of Rome, a process which will develop according to the criteria of the Art of Demopraxy as enunciated by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte. On that day, after the introductory speeches by the artist from Biella and Naldini, the debates among the participants in the work tables will start, and will carry on the day after. In the programme of the afternoon of 25th is also the plenary, to share what has emerged from the work tables through the recaps of the facilitators. The Rebirth Forum will this way define common plans of action to be carried out in the course of the following 12 months, through a method of gathering the reflections, experiences and proposals of the participants (from the perspective of a collective dialogue). The public conference drawing the curtain on the Rebirth Forum is scheduled for Saturday 26th January from 10.00 to 13.00, also at the MACRO at via Nizza 138 in Rome, and it will illustrate the contents of the two previous days and the objectives to achieve.

“The Art of Demopraxy*3 – we read in a press release for the initiative – is founded on the acknowledgement of the fact that individuals, united in the different organizations composing society (associations, foundations, companies, private and public bodies, profit and non-profit institutions, consortiums, committees, clubs, work groups and any other form of organized collaboration), exercise an actual political power on a daily basis. People spend in fact hours, days, years in them; constantly making choices and taking decisions impacting the lives of workers, entrepreneurs, suppliers, customers, associates, supporters and family members. All organizations are micro-governments or micro-parliaments in themselves, spread across the social fabric. Practices carried out in them are in fact a combination of public and private politics. The task of Demopraxy is to make these organizations and their practices visible and aware, and to connect them in order to form actual systems of participatory management. These systems, if extended to the whole society, make possible the realization of the ancient dream of democracy, the government by people.”

Please see the event’s Facebook page for further info and contacts.
Please click here to find out the names of the members of the committee of the Rebirth Forum in Rome.

*1 – Demopractic Working Sites are currently in progress in Havana, Alghero, Melbourne, Bali, and others are being activated elsewhere, taking the Art of Demopraxy into extremely diverse cultural and socio-economical contexts.
*2 – Rome’s Rebirth Forum will gather organizations (public bodies, institutions, companies, profit and non-profit associations) already operating on the territory on the basis of their vocation to responsibility and direct action.
*3 – The term ‘practice’ – ‘praxis’ in Greek – replaces the term ‘cratòs’, i.e. power.