Over 2 million euros from Cariplo Foundation to bring new generations closer to culture and support generational change
Youth Club is the name of the new experimental initiative promoted by Cariplo Foundation, designed to bring younger people closer to the theatre, reducing inequalities in access to culture: Donizetti Theatre Foundation, with its project “2025: voices, sounds, generations”, is one of the involved entities, thanks to its numerous training programs aimed at young people.
Cariplo Foundation will provide over 2 million euros in total to support an ambitious and participatory project that will network the main Lombard cultural institutions, and beyond, active in live performances, with a common goal: to combat educational poverty, reduce inequalities and promote active participation of new generations in cultural life.
The participating institutions will commit to enhancing and strengthening their cultural programs aimed at audiences between 0 and 30 years old, developing new formats, adopting languages closer to them, and building active relationships with schools, universities, community centers, and other educational entities to reach and involve young people where they live, grow, and learn.
Giovanni Azzone, President of Cariplo Foundation, states: “Most young people and children in Italy do not go to the theatre, except for some occasions with school. This is part of the problem known as ‘educational poverty’. Those who do not have opportunities of this kind are as if they were giving up developing a part of their cultural baggage. Certainly, initiatives suitable for children, teenagers, and young people of today are needed, with an offer that brings these generations closer. The risk is twofold: theatres will not succeed in achieving a generational change of audience, and new generations will lose a great opportunity to be moved, grow, and get excited by the power of the theatrical experience. Youth Club aims to reverse this trend. It does so with the alliance and sharing of objectives with many theatrical realities in the territory. It is an important piece of the journey to bring the magic of performance to the youngest; we have also done this with the LAIVIN program, which in eighteen years has involved over 42,000 high school students, in this case giving them the thrill of getting on stage and putting themselves out there. Engaging young people to give them formative experiences. This is the goal. In return, we will have a generation that integrates their pastimes with other activities of cultural value.”
“We are particularly pleased with the involvement of Cariplo Foundation in the Youth Club project”, comments Massimo Boffelli, General Director of the Donizetti Theatre Foundation, “For years our Foundation has been committed to education by designing, studying, and implementing programs for young people and very young people. Youth Club is for us a recognition of the great work done in recent years and a push to ensure that the Donizetti Theatre and the Social Theatre increasingly become a home for everyone, but especially for new generations. Our priority is the creation of a dynamic and inclusive cultural environment that not only brings young people closer to the theatre but actively involves them, promoting an integrated development of knowledge, relationships, and, for young adults, job opportunities in the cultural sector”.
The Opera section of the Foundation offers a rich educational and didactic program, under the umbrella of Donizetti Education, aimed at “nursery, primary and secondary schools of first and second grade, and teachers, as well as the under-30 audience. The education proposal is articulated in various activities: shows, workshops, a cross-cutting Donizetti Opera Family subscription, the ‘Generation Beauty’ project, under the banner of culture and beauty for growth, and, last but not least, the Donizetti Summer Camp, a summer proposal for children and teenagers from 8 to 14 years old.”
The educational projects related to the Prose and Other Paths seasons are structured around one or more shows from the two seasons. In choosing the titles, the Artistic Direction pays particular attention to productions that lend themselves to in-depth projects. This facilitates the work of the Educational Services because it is planned from the programming of the schedule. Various projects enhance local resources and engage in dialogue with them to allow young people to get to know associations and entities. The project lines are defined in three areas of intervention: “approaching a” “classic” work, focusing on how it questions “today’s youth and some aspects of their lives; a complex project starting from environmental or social issues; the” subscription to the Other Paths Season, through which young people are accompanied in groups to view shows for the development of a critical eye and an approach to theater languages. There “is also the Young Project, which aims at” guiding and “introducing young people to professional theater and” encouraging a vision that is as open as possible to the future of “theatrical art. On one hand, therefore, the annual course for actors, on the” other, preparatory workshops for stage technician professions.
On the occasion of the Bergamo Jazz International Festival, every year the project “Let’s Meet Jazz” is presented in collaboration with CDpM – Music Production Teaching Center, aimed at Primary and Secondary Schools of I and II grade. The interventions carried out in recent years represent a didactic model of excellence recognized at an institutional level for its strong educational value and dissemination of jazz language among young generations. There are two types of lecture-concerts: “Everybody wants to do jazz” for primary schools and “The ‘art of’ improvisation” for lower and upper secondary schools.
There “is, finally, the Donizetti Studio, the Foundation’s first space that is born with a vocation strictly linked to the educational sections of the theater, where one can experience” art by experimenting with creativity in all its forms and where one can enter into a relationship with the cultural and social realities of the city.
In addition to Fondazione Teatro Donizetti, the following organizations adhere to Youth Club: Fondazione I Pomeriggi Musicali of Milan, Associazione Centro Teatrale Bresciano of Brescia, Teatro dell’Elfo of Milan, Teatro Franco Parenti of Milan, Fondazione del Teatro Grande of Brescia, Associazione Lirica e Concertistica Italiana (AsLiCo) – Teatro Sociale of Como, Fondazione Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli of Cremona, Fondazione Teatro Carlo Coccia of Novara, Fondazione Teatro Fraschini of Pavia.
Youth Club is an initiative promoted by Fondazione Cariplo to encourage the younger generations to approach the performing arts.
