A performance is planned for this evening at the Teatro Franco Parenti. The work is a theatre training project entitled “L’umana impresa. La fabbrica degli attori” organised by the Associazione Pier Lombardo in collaboration with the Pirelli Foundation.

Here it is. That’s my machine. I’ve worked on it for over twenty years.” He goes around the calender machine, runs his rough hand over the peeling paint, moves a knob, lifts a lever, strokes a gear… And again he says: “Over twenty years…” He smiles an affectionate sort of smile, as one might when speaking of a friend or a family member. And the memories flood back.

The storage facility is at the back of the old factory on the western outskirts of Settimo Torinese. It has been closed for some years now, its place taken by a new factory with avant-garde architecture, robots and computers, diffused lighting and the highest safety standards: a “beautiful factory”, sustainable and extremely productive. And all the old machines, which bring to mind the twentieth century and old assembly lines in noisy, smoke-filled workshops, are now piled up in a large room, waiting to be scrapped. Ready for the foundry, from which they will emerge as brand-new raw materials for iron and steel. But for the moment, they just summon up memories.

“I first entered the factory in the mid-1980s. A worker. And I learnt quickly: precision, skill, a feeling for the materials, and great care. Working on time. And well.” Fatigue, strength, tensions, conflicts, changes. Work, in any case. And teamwork. “We used to meet up in the shift change room, to hand over the job, explain about some problem with a machine, and calculate production numbers. And to talk about us, about our families, the contract that was to be signed, the prize for achieving production targets.”

Being together, in other words. Thriving, with the satisfaction of a profession that gave not just wages but also pride in a job well done. And this pride remains, even now that everything has been replaced, adopting the rules and rhythms of digital manufacturing. People learn to use and control the machines with an iPad. We meet up, between generations.

“The time has come for the young, for tech engineers. But we, older workers, have experience. So it’s up to us to advise, to teach.”

He talks and remembers and explains. He runs his hand over the roller that the rubber went around. He leans forward and gets up from the operator’s seat, recalling once familiar movements. He has mastered every movement, revealing long-formed habits and care.

“She taught me a lot, she did,” he confides, gazing at the silent, inoperative calender machine, as if it were a person. And he says how machines are not just materials and gears, for they also have a sort of soul. “And the machine, docile, assists him…”, wrote an engineer-poet who loved factories, many years ago.

The worker does not know who that engineer was, and he has never read those pages. But he well understands those words, having learnt from real life experience. “This was my machine…”, he repeats. He bows his head for one last look, and then he turns and walks away.

by Antonio Calabrò

The complex relations between production and culture organisations are analysed in a thesis debated at the University of Padua

Enterprises and culture, entrepreneurs caring for more than just profit, and factories as sites that no longer stand merely for production, struggle and labour, but much more – in other words, corporate patronage, the latest evolution of good production culture, where enterprises stands beside artists and art exhibitions: a phenomenon to be explored and developed. This is why reading “Mecenatismo industriale dall’800 a oggi. Il caso Veneto tra identità storica e comunicazione presente” (“Industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. The Venetian case, amid historic identity and present communication”), is worth reading – a thesis debated by Luca Turato as part of the Master’s in Communication Strategies programme at the University of Padua.

The research work unravels from a question: the concept of patronage has been tied, for a long time, to the relationship between patron and artist, but what happens when enterprises becomes patrons? It then continues by pointing out that – unlike traditional patronage – the relation between enterprise and culture offers several nuances that make for “an interesting research study for the understanding of the terms and purposes of such relationships”.

Thus, Turato begins his work with a historical summary of the relationships between patron and artist, before moving on to an exploration of industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. He then considers the present circumstances of this phenomenon, scrutinising “the cultural industry”, non-profit experiences, the role of grants and that of corporate museums.

Another research layer, explains the author, is then integrated through the analysis of a specific case study – that of Venetian enterprises – based on specific research undertaken by a monitoring body set up by Confindustria Veneto, which carried out a census of industrial patronage in 2016 and in 2022.

Turato’s conclusions are quite enlightening: enterprises that get closer to culture may do so not only for ethical and moral reasons, but also to give concrete form to their social responsibility towards the regions, which can then become the foundation of new relationships between production and social systems.

Mecenatismo industriale dall’800 a oggi. Il caso Veneto tra identità storica e comunicazione presente (“Industrial patronage from the 19th century to today. The Venetian case, amid historic identity and present communication”)

Luca Turato

Thesis, University of Padua, Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, Department of Historical, Geographical and Ancient Studies, Master’s in Communication Strategies, 2023

A recently published book offers different readings and perspectives of reality

A change of pace in order to keep pace – something that should affect us all, including those entrepreneurs and managers who really want to open up a new horizon for their companies, as we all need to start looking at the world with fresh eyes. This is why reading – with great care – Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world), written by Andrea Graziosi (professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples), proves very useful.

Graziosi’s book takes its cue from two events: on the one hand, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and on the other, the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine. He draws his conclusion by considering, first, the need to review our notions, our categories, and our interpretation of the past, as well as of the present. Covid and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, according to Graziosi, have all of a sudden brought under the spotlight the evolution and the crisis of Western societies and, in the process, have revealed how the categories we grew up with and used to interpret the 20th century – and our own lives – are now obsolete.

In other words, the author considers how much what we consider “Modern”, i.e. the “continuously evolving product of rapid transformation that began in Central-Western Europe about four centuries ago, needs updating – an update closely linked to scientific, technical and economic development”.

The book is subdivided into two distinct parts: the first hundred pages or thereabouts include a careful analysis of the concept of “Modern” and its evolution from World War Two until today, including the end of the farming world, individualism, the fall in birth rates and the extraordinary step forward in life expectancy, but also a decreased vitality in social systems and the coalescence of new reactionary movements, and then the difficult reassembly of plural collectivities in ethnic and racial terms. In the second part, however, Graziosi tackles “issues and prospects” related to the evolution of the notion of “Modern”, a notion that has shaped our lives until recently. Here, the author focuses on what we could do to rescue, through innovation and despite its current crises, a certain kind of Western world and modernity that nonetheless, despite all its flaws, succeeded in advancing freedom and human dignity more than any other known system, and he achieves this by focusing on the project – accomplished yet still ongoing – whose final aim is a united Europe.

Occidenti e Modernità certainly requires some careful reading and, perhaps, even further rereadings as events unfold.

Occidenti e Modernità. Vedere un mondo nuovo (Western countries and modernity. Looking at a new world)

Andrea Graziosi

Il Mulino, 2023

Despite its creative nature and an aptitude for amazing recoveries, Italy risks running out of a resource that’s essential to development: people, and young people, above all. We are indeed heading towards a “demographic winter”, with declining birth rates and an increasingly older population – a veritable “unhappy degrowth”. And this is happening while the country is already in the thrall of a deep crisis affecting education, a crisis that’s gradually worsening as competitiveness and the quality of its economic and social growth are suffering from the ascendancy of the “knowledge economy”, as the challenges entailed by the so-called “digital economy” and the widespread presence of Artificial Intelligence demand people equipped with a substantial critical cultural background. Meanwhile, sinking graduate numbers have placed Italy at the bottom of EU ranks, and the number will keep on falling over the next years. Is a decline really unavoidable, then? Will we no longer be able to write a “future-oriented story”?

To get a clearer idea, let’s have a look at some figures, taken from recent data released by ISTAT (Il Sole24Ore and La Stampa, 8 April). In 2022, for the first time since the unification of Italy, the number of births fell to fewer than 400,000 children (393,000 to be precise), with 713,000 deaths. Basically, seven babies and thirteen deaths – almost double the number of births – for every 1,000 inhabitants.

Over the past five years, Italy lost a million people, its population dropping below 59 million (with the South ravaged by rising emigration: 629,000 inhabitant less than in 2018). Moreover, the country has grown old: the average age is of 46 years and there are more than 14 million people aged over 65 years, that is, 24% of the population (after Japan, we’re now the oldest country in the world).

“Italy is fading away”, drearily tweeted Elon Musk, while Giuseppe De Rita, president of CENSIS (the Italian research institute on social change) provided a broodier and more comprehensive account: “We are a country without any notions of a future, without motivations, without goals. The younger generations no longer have children, and they no longer get married, too. They do not even set a low bar for themselves for forming a family.” (Corriere della Sera, 8 April). Most of them suffer from precarious employment conditions, high living costs in the larger cities, scarce availability of family services (schools, nursery schools, etc.) and negligence concerning women’s employment – just a few of the reasons for this widespread lack of confidence.

Chiara Saraceno, sociologist preoccupied with social inequality themes, summarises issues and prospects as follows: “Supporting people who choose to have children implies a commitment to integrated and ongoing policies that allow young people to be able to think about the future with a reasonable amount of confidence and that create contexts able to nurture both the children born and raised within them and their parents”.

International comparisons show that “in Europe, the highest fertility rates (though mostly below the reproduction levels) and lower differences in age groups are found in those countries offering more opportunities to young people and better equipped with services able to care for newborns, as well as more congenial to working mothers. Financial assistance is important, if continuous and substantial, yet less so than early childhood services, support for gender equality, conciliation policies”.

Essentially, our issues encompass a demographic decline, a weak social fabric and a lack of reforms, as well as scarce quality and training of human resources, which affect productivity and economic competitiveness in industries and services. “In 20 years’ time there will only be 80,000 graduates”, worryingly estimates Francesco Profumo, president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo and former minister of Education, Universities and Research (during the Monti government), as well as former president of the Italian National Research Council.

It’s easy maths: this year, about 500,000 students, predominantly born in 2004, will take their high-school examinations – in 2004, however, the number of high-school students amounted to 800,000, which means that, in almost 20 years, the high-school student population has almost halved. Now, out of these current 500,000 students, 60% will go to university – 300,000, then – and only 60% of them will graduate in four or five years: 180,000 graduates. If this trend continues, out of the 390,000 children born this year, 240,000 will take their high-school exams in 2041. 140,000 will attend university, and 80,000 will graduate. Too few for sure.

What can we do? We can push for new demographic policies, knowing however that due to their long-range nature we’ll only see the results in 20 years’ time, and in the meantime, explains Profumo, “We must learn to manage immigration”. In other words, we need a long-term plan to attract young people to Italy, young people with a drive for development and the desire for a future, and we must train them and provide them with opportunities.

Profumo adds, “Demographic issues, just like immigration and education issues, are central to our future. Yet, political parties want immediate results. And this is certainly of no help to Italy”.

We are “a country unaware of the dynamics that govern the world”, asserts Luca De Biase (Il Sole24Ore, 8 April), that is, a country that doesn’t care about innovation, oblivious to the challenges posed by our modern times currently undergoing an intense and fierce “metamorphosis” engendered by the environmental and digital twin transition.

Nowadays, the creativity and innovative entrepreneurship generated by the economic boom, the dynamism that marked the 1980s, the commitment to Europe and the euro, and the momentum gained after the COVID-19 pandemic, are all in danger to be thwarted by this fall in confidence and by the educational and cultural deficiencies affecting the new generations.

As such, we need an education system moulded by the values and the criteria of a “polytechnic culture”, able to combine humanities and sciences and driven by a multidisciplinary approach, blending cyber science, philosophy, mathematics, the law and social science, in order to write Artificial Intelligence’s new “algorithm maps”, as well as of technical, engineering and creative minds, from manufacturing to services. We also need an education system focused on critical awareness and well-disposed towards smart cities, as well as towards all the new types of circular and civic economy, and development founded on environmental and social sustainability.

Essentially, we need to rebuild “the notion of future”, and make innovation possible once again – that’s what good policies are for.

(photo Getty Images)

Rise of a “new renaissance” featuring the latest, cutting-edge technologies – in Italy, too

Digital versus real. Virtual versus tangible. Opposites that do not cancel each other out but actually, and increasingly, exist together and integrate into each other, and to which social activities and production operations must get used. Digitalisation as a path that must inevitably be undertaken by all, with some care and moderation, however.

These are the interdependent topics that Francesco Caio and Pierangelo Soldavini tackle in their recently published Digitalizzazione. Per un nuovo rinascimento italiano (Digitalisation. An Italian renaissance), a book that deals, clearly and effectively, with a complex and often misunderstood topic.

The work was inspired by real-life events: the pandemic emergency, inflation, the war in Europe, the energy crisis – all this has basically overturned our world and prompted the need of facing a “new normal”. The two authors argue that these circumstances gave rise to, and accentuated, the importance of digital tools, which allow for increasingly fast and flexible relationships and services, offering personalised custom-made products. The issue is how to “govern” these new technologies and thus the “hybrid world” that will ensue.

A challenge that, the work emphasises, must be undertaken knowing full well that those who stay behind now may not be able to bridge the gap later on. Further, a challenge that is very significant for Italy, a country that, objectively, is rather behind in terms of digitalisation. Yet, also a challenge that could inspire a “digital renaissance”, with all the benefits that might follow – a renaissance that could have an impact on various different areas concerning the country’s civic and economic life, such as the public sector, telemedicine, cybersecurity, digital citizenship, smart working, tourism, schools and universities, and much more.

Hence, Caio and Soldavini start exploring this topic by looking at how to “dissipate resistance” in the long term, scrutinising the infrastructural aspects that should be implemented and assessing several applications that could already prove effective. Paths and goals that could be achieved with investments (the PNRR, the Italian recovery and resilience plan, gets a mention too, of course) but, above all, with the creation of a veritable digital culture that could lead everyone to understand the reasons why these new standards and transformation should be attained – an ambitious and extremely urgent project that, nonetheless, is within our reach.

Towards the end, the book includes an excellent and important assertion that outlines “a culture that changes in full awareness of the consequences of technology and of its own actions, that teaches people to assess the excesses and pervasiveness of technologies that, by their very nature, are all-encompassing and able to take over all aspects of our personal life. And that will turn into the ability to master the danger of such technologies controlling and manipulating consciousnesses, which may arise as a result of a constant and warped use driven by business motives”.

Digitalizzazione. Per un nuovo rinascimento italiano (Digitalisation. An Italian renaissance)

Francesco Caio, Pierangelo Soldavini

Vita e Pensiero, 2023

A thesis defended at the University of Padua analyses the theoretical and practical links between 4.0 technologies and sustainable production

Sustainable production and sustainable innovation – a relationship that may be taken for granted, yet not actually so easy to achieve. A relationship that, indeed, needs to be further investigated and analysed in order to be fully understood.

To this end, reading Marco Bettiol’s thesis, defended at the University of Padua, Department of Economic Sciences, proves very useful.

Entitled “Innovazione e tecnologie 4.0: sfide e opportunità per uno sviluppo sostenibile” (“Innovation and 4.0 technologies: challenges and opportunities for sustainable development”), it presents a significant analysis of the current situation, as well as the historical relationship between innovation, 4.0 technologies and sustainable production. In particular, as Bettiol explains, the study “focuses on analysing the relationship between innovation and sustainability” with the aim of “examining how technological innovation could contribute to the promotion of sustainable development”.

The research paper first investigates key innovation concepts and sustainable development goals, before tackling “4.0 technology” and its positive implications for sustainability. Finally, the third section of Bettiol’s study looks at two case-studies concerning two companies from Treviso: Gasparini Industries S.r.l., an engineering company that manufactures hydraulic press brakes and guillotine shears, and Meneghin S.r.l., a company leader in the global market for the planning, construction and assembly of equipment for the professional intensive breeding of rabbits. Two examples amongst many that, however, well illustrate the connections explored in the thesis.

Bettiol’s research provides a fair and square contextualisation of the innovation and sustainability theme, and this is what makes it a valuable read.

Innovazione e tecnologie 4.0: sfide e opportunità per uno sviluppo sostenibile (“Innovation and 4.0 technologies: challenges and opportunities for sustainable development”)

Thesis, Marco Bettiol, University of Padua, M. Fanno Department of Economics and Business Sciences, Master’s in Economics programme

Narrating entrepreneurship, its values, its pace, its history and future, in order to acknowledge and promote the key features that distinguish Italian identity and its “do, do well and do good” approach, with a view not to lose Italy’s place as second manufacturing country in Europe, just after Germany. Entrepreneurship understood in terms of work, wealth and well-being, innovation and community spirit, and narration intended as the representation of values and as the backbone of genuine “industrial pride”, on which to build our sustainable development.

To attain all this, we need to make use of all the languages best suited to illustrate our current reality: films and videos, such as those made by film-makers capturing factories and workshops through inquisitive lenses; writings, such as those selected over the past three years by the ‘Premio per la letteratura d’impresa’ (‘Corporate literature award’), organised by ItalyPost; photographs, such as the images showcased at the outstanding exhibitions held at the MAST Foundation in Bologna, co-founded by outstanding entrepreneur Isabella Seragnoli; contemporary art, such as the Ritratti (Portraits) and NOw/here installations by Gian Maria Tosatti, with a nod to Kounellis, Burri and Tàpies, currently on display at the HangarBicocca site – a “spotlight on the industrial era”, according to the Il Sole24Ore, 2 April. And also music, such as Il Canto della fabbrica (Song of the factory) performed by the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and directed by Salvatore Accardo, a piece inspired by the sounds and beat of the Pirelli plant in Settimo Torinese, a building designed by Renzo Piano. And finally, to get back on topic, theatre.

L’Umana Impresa. La fabbrica degli attori (Human enterprise. The actor factory) was staged last night at the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, directed by Stefano De Luca: the theatre’s Great Hall was packed and the audience responded with continued and thunderous applause – we’ll go into more details shortly.

Here we are then, theatre. Some time ago, in autumn 2015, L’impresa va in scena (Business takes the stage) epitomised the theme encompassing the Culture Week organised by Confindustria and Museimpresa, featuring theatre performances in ten Italian cities. A few years before that, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, director Serena Sinigaglia presented Settimo, la fabbrica e il lavoro (Settimo, factory and work), a piece integrating the accounts of labourers, technicians and engineers from the Pirelli plant.

Then, over time, an increasing number of initiatives arose, all inspired by the strong bonds that tie together entrepreneurship and performance, industrial manufacturing and the craft skills involved in designing sets and costumes, research labs and theatre labs – all activities driven by a common awareness that both entrepreneurship and theatre are “communal” experiences (as also attested by the efforts in promoting and supporting theatres undertaken by entrepreneurial families such as Falck, Borletti and Pirelli in driving the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan).

Andrée Shammah, activities coordinator at the Teatro Parenti, deeply believes in the relationship between theatre and entrepreneurship and in the value of cultural crossings, and, as well as likening “entrepreneurship” to the efforts made by those who bring theatre to life and focusing on the concept of theatre as a “lab”, also integrates common notions such as ‘sharing’ and ‘contagion’ – cum and tangere (from the Latin, ‘with’ and ‘to touch’). Because, indeed, the spirit of theatre is contagious, it infects an audience, and an audience is rewarding only when it’s engaged. Contagious, too, is the drive to innovation and engagement in factories, as engagement breeds competitiveness, and therefore progress.

Connections that consolidate relationships. Once upon a time, there was a bolt factory in Via Pier Lombardo, just where the Teatro Parenti stands now, and Andrée Shammah jokingly says that, “Here, perhaps, there are sprites inhabiting the site and inspiring its soul” – industrious sprites.

But let’s go back to the L’Umana Impresa. The piece is the outcome of a protracted workshop project by six young actors (Tobia Dal Corso Polzot, Elia Galeotti, Lorenzo Giovannetti, Claudia Grassi, Edoardo Rivoira and Emilia Tiburzi), led by director and coordinator Stefano De Luca and playwriter Veronica Del Vecchio (whose accomplishments also include bringing back to life works by Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sinisgalli).

After conducting research in the archives of the Pirelli Foundation, conversations, and sessions in high-tech industrial “research and development” labs, the actors put together a performance narrating Pirelli’s 150 years of history, starting with its founder, Giovan Battista Pirelli. And, at the same time, they challenged themselves to work as a team, a team busy undertaking research and reinterpretation activities on the stage –

a veritable “actor factory” indeed, which well describes an initiative that travels between past and future, just like manufacturing does. An open-ended, experimental piece that revolves around eight key terms: Materials, Factory, Machine, Theatre, Path, Worlds, Nature, and Future. Yet, also an instructive investigation of the multiple meanings embodied in the notion of “entrepreneurship” and of the motivations behind industrial culture and production processes, motivations that change together with the times, technologies, methods, working conditions and markets. And, moreover, a multi-voiced reflection on the relationship between historical awareness and contemporary challenges, on the power of memory as a condition for corporate competitiveness, on the “metamorphosis” set in motion by production and social processes.

Indeed, the nature of products and services, of story-telling and innovations, are the factors that, over time and in such complex and selective global markets, consolidate the ability to withstand competition.

In essence, what we see played out on stage are topics that have been long neglected in theatre performances – the value of entrepreneurship and work, and this also gives the chance to show new generations how enterprises are in fact extraordinary places, in which to nurture personal projects and ambitions.

The première was held last week, in front of a special audience comprising 450 young adults, aged from 16 to 18 years old, from technical institutes in Milan. “When they left, they were spellbound,” stated managers at the Pirelli Foundations, “as they discovered a world, the industrial world, which they didn’t know anything about, brimming with digital technologies, professional challenges, a future rife with personal and professional opportunities”. And, in the case of Pirelli, also a universe featuring high-tech products connected to competitive sports, such as Formula 1 racing, as well as embodying a cutting-edge culture embracing environmental and social sustainability, communication, and the relationship between science and society.

Now, the ambition is to “bring the L’Umana Impresa to other schools, to university students at the Polytechnic and Bocconi universities in Milan, and then to other cities”. Entrepreneurship on stage, then, to keep on weaving “a future-oriented story”.

Friday, 21 April 2023. The Pirelli Foundation offers guided tours entitled “Pirelli: The Architectures of Industry. From Via Ponte Seveso to the Bicocca District”. These are held as part of the “Dai borghi alla città Dalla città ai quartieri” programme, which celebrates the centenary of the incorporation of the Municipality of Niguarda into the City of Milan. The event is organised under the patronage of Municipio 9 and the City of Milan, in collaboration with the Bicocca Committee, among others.

With the help of the historical and contemporary archival documents now preserved by the Foundation, participants will be able to retrace the history of both Pirelli and the Bicocca district. The district, which was part of the Municipality of Niguarda until 1923, has been radically transformed over the past hundred years. Visitors will find out about the main buildings that have made the history of the Long P brand, in a temporary exhibition devoted to some of the company’s buildings in Milan: the modern canteen designed by Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s, the Pirelli Tower by Gio Ponti, and the Bicocca Headquarters designed by Vittorio Gregotti.

Three admission times: 5 – 6 – 7 p.m. (duration: 45 minutes)

Admission is free, while places last, with booking required at this link. Registration ends on Wednesday 17 March 2023.

Visitors’ entrance: Pirelli Foundation, Viale Sarca 220, Milan

Click here for the full programme of the “Dai borghi alla città Dalla città ai quartieri” event.

For more information please write to visite@fondazionepirelli.org.

The special opening of the Milano-Bicocca Headquarters once again confirms the support and participation of Pirelli in FAI Spring Days 2023 organised by FAI (The National Trust for Italy), a third-sector entity (ETS).

On Sunday 26 March 2023, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., guided tours with the staff of the Pirelli Foundation will help visitors find out about the company’s rich historical, artistic and cultural heritage, taking them on a journey from the late nineteenth century through to the present day.

The visit to the Headquarters will range from the Pirelli Foundation (with its Historical Archive with four kilometres of documents, the exhibition Pirelli: When History Builds The Future and the temporary exhibition Designing Light: Pirelli and the Architecture of the Workplace), to the fifteenth-century Bicocca degli Arcimboldi and on to the Headquarters with its historic cooling tower, the heart of the old factory and a symbol of the workplace.

For further information on how to take part and on the places that will be open during the FAI Spring Days 2023, please visit www.giornatefai.it.

“Adess ghe capissarem on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter”, is the phrase in the Milanese dialect (“Now we’ll understand something, let’s go and look inside”) that Luigi Emanueli, one of the greatest Pirelli engineers in the 1940s and the inventor of both the fluid-filled cable and the famous Pirelli CINTURATO™, often used to say.

Looking inside the production machines and products to keep experimenting with them. Innovation is in Pirelli’s DNA and it runs all the way through the history of the company: in the search for increasingly sustainable materials, in new products and process technologies, and in the field of communication.

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