Culture Salons - UK/Italy Season 2020

The launch of the Culture Salons series as part of the Season marked an important step in securing the sustainability of the bilateral cultural relationship and will have legacy beyond 2020.

Through our Cultural Salons, topics of bilateral interest are discussed with the aim of exploring culture in its various forms and complexities.

In  2020, we ran the following three cultural salons:

Culture Salon 1– Creative Independents: Securing Our Future

In collaboration with ArtLab

In September we held a session that surveyed of crisis-responsive initiatives across Italy and the UK which were set up by independents for independents, as well as identifying common issues, shared concerns and interrogating what is needed to underpin the sustainability of independents as an important part of the supply chain in our cultural ecology.

Brought to you by:
Jean Cameron – Creative Director UK/IT Season 2020
Ugo Bacchella – President, Fondazione Fitzcarraldo
Kate McGrath – Director Fuel / Freelance Taskforce
Julie Lomax – CEO, Artist Information Company
Matthew Gough – Freelance dance professional
Ryan Hughes – Founder and CEO Coventry Biennial
Gaia Di Lorenzo – Representative, Art Workers Italia (AWI)
Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti – Representative, Art Workers Italia (AWI)
Linda Di Pietro – Chief Cultural Officer - BASE Milano
Paolo Montemurro – Co-founder and Director, Basilicata Creativa - Matera Hub (European Creative Hubs Network)

Culture Salon 2 – Culture For Resilience: Cities & Festivals Looking Ahead

In October we explored the role of culture at the heart of resilient cities, with a focus on the potential of festivals in guiding us through crisis recovery.

In this session:

  • Programming in this new world context
  • The role of new audiences and young people and
  • The tension between economic and social priorities in recovery

Brought to you by: 
Stella Kanu – Executive Director, LIFT
Rachel Launay – Country Director, British Council
Dave Moutrey – Director & Chief Executive at HOME and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council
Chenine Bhathena – Creative Director, Coventry City of Culture
Richard Wakely – Artistic Director & CE, Belfast International Arts Festival
Assessore Filippo del Corno – Councillor for Culture, City of Milan
Fabrizio Grifasi – General and Artistic Director, Romaeuropa Festival
Anna Maria Meo - General Director of Teatro Regio di Parma Foundation, representing Parma Capital of Culture 2020+21

Culture Salon 3 – New Business Approaches to Culture

The British Council’s third and final virtual Culture Salon event in 2020, arrived in a moment of great upheaval in society and the culture sector at large.  The Covid-19 pandemic, continued to demonstrate the importance of culture for the resilience of our societies, but is the culture sector infrastructure fit to handle the grand challenges of our times? How can we ensure that as we move into economic recovery, we have fit-for-purpose business approaches to support sector resilience and innovation? How can we spread the needed knowledge-transfer for capacity building to the culture sector?

In this session:

  • New business models and disruptive innovation 
  • Digital transformation 
  • Financial architecture 
  • International partnerships

Brought to you by:
Caroline Meaby – Director, Global Arts Network British Council 
Federica Olivares – President Edizioni Olivares, Director and Founder International Program in Cultural Diplomacy, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore 
Fran Sanderson – Director, Arts Programme and Investments, Nesta  
Cav. Simon Mordant AO – Executive Co-Chairman and Founder of Luminis Partners; Member of Tate International Council
Leonie Bell – Director, V&A Dundee 
Marco Morganti – Director, Direzione Impact, Intesa Sanpaolo
Christian Greco – Director, Egyptian Museum of Turin 
James Bradburn – Director, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Watch the Culture Salons videos