Educational courses on road safety and sustainable mobility for primary and secondary schools have begun at WOW Spazio Fumetto, curated by Pirelli Foundation Educational, the educational sector of the Comics Museum and the traffic police. There are also lots of weekend events for children and adults, to go over the rules of the road together.

People become pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists at an early age, which means it is essential for them to know the rules of road safety. This is one of the messages that the Pirelli Foundation Educational has for years been committed to getting across in its educational programme for schools. A number of activities for audiences of all ages have been organised for the National Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victimson Sunday 17 November, in collaboration with the Traffic Police and WOW Spazio Fumetto. From Monday 11 to Friday 15 November, educational courses will be put on for primary and secondary schools. They will be held by traffic police officers together with the educators of Pirelli Foundation Educational and WOW Spazio Fumetto. After a theoretical introduction, with videos and personal testimony from the officers, the students will learn about the dangers and the rules of the road before putting the knowledge they have acquired into practice in a creative workshop. In particular, the primary school children will help create models of an ideal smart city, which will be safe for pedestrians and attentive to the young. Lower and upper secondary school students, on the other hand, will concentrate on the use of two- and four-wheeled vehicles, and they will examine the issue ofdistraction while driving, creating comic strips based on real events.

An exhibition at WOW Spazio Fumetto with pictures and audio-visuals from the Historical Archive of the Pirelli Foundation will examine the theme of safety through the most famous advertising campaigns in the history of Pirelli’s visual communication.

In addition to the workshops for young people, there will also be many events during the weekend, with moments of play and entertainment. On Saturday, 16 November, participants will be able to try out a driving simulator and an interactive carpet to experience the effects of driving while drunk, meetings to learn more about the effects of being distracted while driving and of not putting on seat belts, as well as testimony on how sport can help overcome the difficulties caused by a road accident. And there will be meetings with Pirelli staff to examine the role played by tyres in road safety today and in the future, as well as an account of the importance of one’s personal commitment to prevention. Sunday will also be packed with activities put on by the traffic police, with guided tours of the display of traffic police vehicles, and participants will be able to visit the exhibition Travel…but in Safety: Road Safety in Pirelli’s Advertising Campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. It will also be possible to try out CYCL-e around™ e-bikes, the new mobility service designed by Pirelli that aims to enrich the experience of cycling tourism by using the latest generation of pedal-assist bikes.

When: 11-17 November 2019

Where: WOW Spazio Fumetto, Viale Campania 12, Milan

A morning at the Pirelli Foundation to discover and examine the close ties between the world of industry and that of culture. More than 50 lower-secondary school students took part today in the “La fabbrica raccontata dagli artisti” (The Factory through the Eyes of Artists) course. The young people had a chance to see, read and listen to the works of great artists who have worked with Pirelli in its almost 150-year history. Photographers, painters, film directors, and writers who, with their different techniques, visions, and points of view have narrated and interpreted the twentieth-century and contemporary factory. From Fulvio Bianconi to Renato Guttuso, Alessandro Mendini to Ugo Mulas, Dino Buzzati to Silvio Soldini, and Alessandro Scotti to Carlo Furgeri Gilbert.

Music, in particular, was the star, from John Cage’s concerts at the Pirelli Tower to the experience of Salvatore Accardo in “Il Canto della Fabbrica”, explained on this special occasion by Maestro Francesco Fiore himself, the composer of the piece. The maestro, the famous musician of the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and first viola of the Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, guided the students through the work, which was commissioned by the Pirelli Foundation and composed in 2017. It was inspired by the sounds of the digital factory in the Pirelli Technology Centre in Settimo Torinese.

A book by multiple authors that collects thoughts on how to achieve the most useful tools for undertaking a true path of development

What does it take to effectively follow the road to development? This is not a question merely touching politics or macroeconomics: it affects every single company and has great value from a cultural point of view, too, thus affecting everyone. Indeed, development does not just mean growth, but something much more complex. And having a clear idea (or at least trying to), is essential for everyone.

What must be done, the steps to undertake, and above all the issues to be faced and resolved: this is the vision provided in the substantial collection of essays entitled “Inclusion, productivity, growth. An agenda for Italy”, edited by Carlo Dell’Aringa, by Paolo Guerrieri with the contribution of AREL (Agency of Research and Legislation), and by about thirty experts in issues related to growth and development but especially focused on the one element that informs all contributions: social inclusion.

And the whole book is inspired precisely by the combination of growth and inclusion. Obviously, growth understood in terms of productivity and efficiency; while inclusion is taken to mean social cohesion and the elimination of inequalities. The choice to analyse together these different aspects of economy and society is based on the conviction, inherent in those who contributed the study, that important relationships exist between these phenomena, even if different from those found in traditional research. In the last decade, it is explained, together with the growth of inequalities a literature has developed, arguing that these could be an obstacle to a strong and stable growth, while a greater degree of equality and social cohesion may be the proper condition for a better development of the economy. The premise of this book is that reaching growth and equality is something to do simultaneously and not in consecutive stages.

The authors then analyse (considering Italy from both a theoretical and a practical point of view) the theme of growth-equality from different aspects: innovation and productivity, training, the politics of labour and welfare, knowledge systems and social investments. As mentioned, particular attention is placed on Italy: the initial consideration is that our country has shown, in the past, a significant reduction in the rate of growth, a long stagnation in the productivity of production factors and an increase in absolute poverty that had never occurred before. The attempt is to identify how these phenomena relate and the nature of their relationship.

This involves some analysis, but not only. The authors strive to describe interventions and policies that could be implemented for the “increase of our economy’s growth potential and, at the same time, to make our economy more inclusive than it is at the moment”. Thus, topics (and issues) related to healthcare, school, education, universities and policies of labour have come under the scrutiny of researchers.

Not everyone might agree with all that is included in this book edited by Dell’Aringa and Guerrieri, but the collection of essays they have collected shows two great qualities: it provides a suitable toolbox to understand the present and does so in plain and understandable language.

Inclusione, produttività, crescita. Un’agenda per l’Italia

(edited by) Carlo Dell’Aringa, Paolo Guerrieri

il Mulino, 2019

A powerful essay published in Argomenti, which discusses the methods for analysing the issue of sustainable development

A technical approach versus a humanistic approach. Two contrasting viewpoints almost perennially paired in any attempts to analyse reality. A duality that is even more relevant in the circumstances experienced by modern production and society, caught between market needs, social pressures, and environmental risks. Ultimately, the issue always remains the same. To truly reach sustainable development, is it best to apply technology or humanities? A complex issue that demands a non-binary answer. Reading “Approaching the limits: from Planetary Boundaries to Ecological Minds. Discussing the Culture of Sustainability “, an essay by Gianfranco Franz (from the Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara), which recently appeared in Argomenti, journal of economics, culture and social research, is a good way to effectively settle some of the thoughts on the topic.

The author explains that the essay investigates the “substantial failure of theories and practices of sustainability, reconstructing the development of the notion itself to endorse the need for a humanistic approach towards sustainable development”. It is Franz’s opinion that “humanistic culture, social disciplines, education and research” must “contribute to the transformation of current social and economic models to win the battle for sustainability and build new ecological thinking”. Not just technology, therefore, is needed to find a better way of production and life in the community. To demonstrate this principle, Franz first retraces what is defined as “sustainability chronology” to then approach the issue of the lack of communication between technical and humanities disciplines with regards to the question of sustainable and balanced development (but not only). Franz focuses then on what he calls “the rhetoric of what should we do?”, formulas on what should be done to “save the world”, to consequently reflect on the (somewhat opposed) relationship between culture and measure, that is, between quality and quantity. From here, the author begins to analyse the contribution of both the humanities and the new threshold developed within the debate on sustainability and development. A threshold that has given rise to methods linked to the study of “footprints” (ecological and cultural above all) that any society might leave.

Gianfranco Franz’s research has strong merit: it contributes to the understanding of how complex the issue of sustainability is, before which any attempt at simplification becomes vain and harmful. Franz, therefore, does not provide definitive solutions and formulas, but encourages thought by really evaluating the whole body of studies dedicated to a theme that is simultaneously cultural and technical: and he achieves this by juxtaposing major scientific and literary contributions (for instance, Giacomo Leopardi).

Franz’s work is not easy reading, but is certainly worth the effort.

Approssimandosi ai limiti: dai Planetary Boundaries alle Ecological Minds. Argomentando intorno alle Culture della Sostenibilità
Gianfranco Franz (Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara)
Argomenti – Rivista di economia, cultura e ricerca sociale, 13, 2019

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“Rectify the unjust society”, write Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, influential liberal economists, on the Corriere della Sera of 27 October. Alesina and Giavazzi examine the market economy but also the need for political and economic choices to try and rectify increasingly unacceptable inequalities. Inequalities between geographical areas, generations, social classes; among people who possess knowledge useful to the digital economy and those other large sections of the population who do not (the growing digital divide affecting a large part of Italian society).

How? This is the central theme of the challenge towards environmental and social sustainability. A challenge posed, with ever greater determination, by scholars within economic, business and trade union circles (as witnessed by Keynes’s reinterpretation on productive public investments and by Antonio Genovesi on the “civil economy”. Also by the works of Krugman, Stiglitz and Fitoussi, with his latest book on The neolanguage of the economy, or, how to tell sick people they are in good health and by the Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded to three scholars, Michael Kremer, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, for their research on poverty and the tools to tackle it). Likewise, by moral authorities (Pope Francis’s calls on the “right economy”) and by that growing part of the general public, starting with the Millennial generation and its extreme concern about the risks of environmental destruction.

Alesina and Giavazzi argue that inequalities are particularly unacceptable when accompanied by social immobility, “that is, when the rich remain rich for generations even when doing little or nothing, while the poor remain steeped in poverty even when working hard to leave it”. They propose a tax reform that applies, with intelligence and balance, taxes on inheritance and intra-family donations, while lowering the contributions on the highest incomes (thus freeing up resources for consumption and investments). Donations of inheritance to non-profit organizations (schools, universities, foundations) to support scholarships for children from low-income families should not be taxed. And, in terms of social security, it is necessary to tie the retirement age to life expectancy, to prevent long-term pensions paid to the elderly weighing on the new generations, thus depleting their resources and crushing their hopes (in short, the unjustly reviled ” Fornero reform” was right, while the expensive, unfair “quota 100”reform just causes further imbalances).

These, so far, are the arguments of Alesina and Giavazzi. But there is more to be added. We could think of massive public investments and incentives for private investments in schools and training, as per the long life learning perspective (of which we wrote about in last week’s blog). These would help thousands of people catching up with the changes in knowledge and skills brought on by the evolution of work in the times of “knowledge economy” and the spread of AI (artificial intelligence). And also, choosing economic policies that would benefit business competitiveness, up to now the most suitable way to encourage social mobility (in order to face competition, capable people are employed and rewarded, regardless of their family name, gender, race, cultural and religious opinions).

Choosing sustainability is an ambitious strategy that requires a long-term view and constant reform, together with coherent and incisive measures. A starting point of reference could be derived from one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, Ernst Cassirer: “The great mission of the Utopia is to make room for the possible as opposed to a passive acquiescence in the present actual state of affairs. It is symbolic thought which overcomes the natural inertia of man and endows him with a new ability, the ability constantly to reshape his human universe.”

Political practice, from “symbolic thinking” to action, can take inspiration from the “Assisi Manifesto” “for an economy on a human scale”, announced a few of weeks ago and signed by Ermete Realacci, president of Fondazione Symbola; Vincenzo Boccia, president of Confindustria; Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti; Francesco Starace, CEO of Enel; Catia Bastioli, CEO of Novamont (the “green plastics”); Enzo Fortunato, director of the Press Room director for the Sacred Franciscan Convent of Assisi; and other fifty business and culture personalities (among others, Renzo Piano, Francesco Profumo, Enrico Giovannini, Stefano Zamagni, Carlo Sangalli, Carlo Petrini, Maurizio Lusetti, Leonardo Becchetti, as well as this blog’s author). The objective: “Facing the climate crisis with courage”, with choices “that represent a great opportunity to make our economy and our society more human-friendly and therefore more equipped for the future”. Sustainability as a key to high-quality work, life, business competitiveness, and economy.

Realacci affirms: “Italy is far ahead on this path. In many sectors, from industry to agriculture, from crafts to services, from design to research, we are the key players in the field of circular and sustainable economy. We are, for example, first in Europe in terms of waste recycling”, 79% compared to 55% in France and 43% in Germany (“Buone notizie” section from Corriere della Sera of 22 October). The green economy generates 3.1 million jobs, a growing figure, in roles that require a high level of specialization and quality. It stimulates new businesses. It reduces energy costs. It improves companies’ profit and loss accounts . It makes products and services more likely to be accepted by a responsible consumer market. It contributes to the “paradigm shift” that is necessary to steer economic development towards a better environmental and social balance (the “GreenItaly 2019” report by Symbola and Unioncamere, presented yesterday in Rome, reiterates this).

Realacci insists: “Not only extremes like “business as usual” or “a happy recession” should exist. We need a goal to set the energies in motion. And Italy can do a lot, with its culture of civic duty, its businesses spread over the territory and its great social sensitivity “. Utopia and reform. Indeed, in Cassirer’s style.

It was the spring of 1929 when Pirelli took over the Companhia Nacional de Artefactos de Cobre (CONAC), a small Brazilian company in the electrical conductor sector, based in San Bernardo, not far from São Paulo. On 25 October that year, Giorgio Pirelli, the third child of the founder Giovanni Battista, was appointed company chairman. In the meantime, construction had started on a large new plant in Capuava, a municipality of Santo André, also in the industrial outskirts of São Paulo. Capuava was up and running in 1931, producing cables. Tyres were added in 1941, and Pirelli S.A. Companhia Industrial Brasileira was born.

Pirelli’s expansion in Brazil was constant and massive: the factory in Santo André was gradually joined by one in Campinas, and one in Gravataí, near Porto Alegre, and another in Sumaré, with the first tyre test track in South America. The opening in 1986 of the modern complex in Feira de Santana, in the State of Bahia, was a great step towards the introduction of advanced eco-compatible processes in the world of manufacturing.

Brazil is almost a second home to Pirelli, and the special place that Brazilian factories immediately acquired within the Group needed the right communication instruments, leading to the launch of Noticias Pirelli, the Brazilian house organ, in 1956, just six years after the Italian Fatti e Notizie. In Noticias we find reports on the “Onde trabalha papai?” initiative, the Brazilian version of factory open days, which were also being held at the time at the Milano Bicocca plant, welcoming the families of workers and employees.

Company meet-ups for festivities such as the “Festa de Natal” and “A Pascoas” became authentic institutions. Culture leverage is one of the most important ways of motivating employees: together with the Pirelli Cultural Centre in Milan, an equally active Pirelli Club operates at the Santo André plant: the factory becomes an arena of artistic events, exhibitions, and literary meetings with leading exponents of contemporary Brazilian culture. The events promoted by the Pirelli Club include theatre performances reserved exclusively for employees. There are also intense sports activities, with the creation of the Club Atlético Pirelli (CAP), encouraging employees to take up a variety of sports, ranging from football to cycling, to basketball, volleyball, athletics, and boxing.

São Paulo and Milan have thus always been linked by a powerful bond, channelling the same willingness of employees to become involved, creating close interaction with their local communities, with a constant focus on issues outside of the world of industry. These issues are ultimately the company’s social responsibility, and in the Brazilian house organ they become “Pirelli Pride”. From today, alongside the Pirelli and Fatti e Notizie magazines, and the Vado e Torno periodical for road hauliers, also the pages of Noticias Pirelli can now be consulted online at this link.

The Pirelli Foundation is once again taking part in the Settimana della Cultura d’Impresa (Corporate Culture Week) organised by Museimpresa, which in 2019 celebrates the 18th anniversary of its foundation. The title of this year’s edition is “A REGOLA D’ARTE. L’Italia delle culture d’impresa: inclusiva e sostenibile” (Best Practice. Corporate Culture Italy: Inclusive and Sustainable).

The Pirelli Foundation is putting on a number of events, including guided tours in which visitors will discover almost 150 years of company history and its research, innovation, design and products, all with an eye on sustainability.

During the tours it will also be possible to examine issues related to the exhibition La fantasia fa l’industria. Le grandi firme per i progetti e i prodotti Kartell e Pirelli (Fantasy Transforms Industry: Big Names for Kartell and Pirelli Projects and Products), organised in collaboration with Kartell, also on display at Kartell Museo in Noviglio. The exhibition will remain open until 7 February 2020.

The dates and times of the guided tours of the Foundation will be as follows:

Tuesday 12 November at 5 p.m.
Wednesday 13 November at 5 p.m.
Tuesday 19 November at 5 p.m.
Wednesday 20 November at 5 p.m.

Admission free while places last

Registration required here: https://www.fondazionepirelli.org/it/prenotazioni-registrazione/

Entrance from Viale Piero e Alberto Pirelli 25, Milan

To find out about the other events in the Settimana della Cultura, follow us on the website and on our social media channels.