I Love Cultural Heritage

A rainy Saturday afternoon.

Listening Valeria Cicala on the phone is like listening to the radio: a flow of images brought up through words alone that flash across my mind around names, personalities, places, and things. We know her voice. She was on several occasions in the company of Gennaro Iorio at Radio Oltre, giving substance to words, and making us realize the importance of the marks we leave all around us. On the radio she uses a formal language so as to have a hold on things, to penetrate the core of what is real, as a pure description of the world but also as the substance of the narrating self. Valeria Cicala is communications lead for the Cultural Heritage Institute of the Emilia-Romagna Region. She defines herself as a worker of culture. Her office is a place filled with cultural heritage, "those objects, those landscapes, those books, that map, that animal, those plants, that wildlife that puts you in relation with others, stimulating interest and a sense of respect for what you have in front of you and see what was in the past to consider the future." Cultural Heritage educates and prepares for what will later come.

It is man's epic in all its best forms and which has made of its languages the specific culture of this city. Working on the languages of the city, giving it substance through attention is the nature of this city. Before any national law, the Cultural Heritage Institute has taken on the task of studying, learning, surveying, protecting and promoting the cultural heritage of the Emilia-Romagna region. It was born around the mindful consideration of Guido Fanti in a dialogue with others such as Ezio Raimondi, Lucio Gambi, Pierluigi Cervellati and the recently deceased Andrea Emiliani. It was born with a method that makes the various languages its signature: reading contexts through interdisciplinary explorations. The census and survey campaigns made it possible to put together the entire landscape in memories worth preserving and enhanced when considering the future. Among the languages used, it is not just data and information gathering but also photography as a witness reinventing itself and telling the intricacies between urban shifts and the territory.

A method that blends languages found in the project Io Amo i Beni Culturali (I Love Cultural Heritage) which aims to improve education and teaching schoolchildren about cultural heritage. At the end of the call with Valeria Cicala, in the studio's silence, some words lingered, about Bologna as a link between people and things, different languages, innovation and creativity, where words are intended as a gift.

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