Last week, the new edition of Cicap Fest was held, on the schedule of the 800th anniversary celebrations of the University of Padua. A special edition with the participation of several speakers, speakers and a large audience on the three days of the event.
Festivals are back and the audience is back. One wonders what is the reason for this success. Certainly, there is a great desire to return, after two years of abstinence, to return to the streets to talk about culture and science. But the usual controversy is back, too: Are there too many festivals, too many “events”, and too much ephemera and too little fetish? I do not agree with all this: most of these meetings leave an imprint because they are a form of open, democratic and transparent participation.
And of course, there are risks, such as always having the same speakers, or – more cunningly – always having the same audience: these festivals are inhabited by a minority of people who go to libraries and read and get information. The important question to answer is: How do you get to the other parts of the participants? In the next few years, new ways and languages will have to be found in order to expand the audience and surprise the part of the audience, which does not expect or does not know events of this kind, discovering them as interesting as a form of popular culture. In short, these festivals contribute – if well constructed – to what Pietro Greco called the democracy of knowledge. And speaking of Greco, during the Cicap Festival, a preview of a book was given with the contributions he had published Bo LiveOur magazine: It will be published soon in bookstores and it is entitled For one acquaintance – Pietro Greco and Il Bo Live.
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