The word "creativity" is used quite often, but everything about it must still be quite intriguing, to judge by the 350,000 people who visited an exhibition devoted to it at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence from October 25th to 28th, 2008.
Presented for the second time, the Festival of Creativity, which is promoted by the Region of Tuscany and organized by the Fondazione Sistema Toscana, has doubled the number of participants compared to the 2006 festival.
And the same goes for the various sections of the festival and the opportunities they provided to become familiar with highly innovative projects, ideas, and initiatives. These included:
- a specific area dedicated to cities and land encompassing urban design, architecture, infrastructure, and the protection of the landscape.
- projects for schools.
- an area for prototypes and manufactured products, dedicated to the world of business, training, and public administration.
- an area dedicated to the world of digital information, the various means of informal communication, the evolution of telephony, and SMS and MMS.
- the new frontiers of "participation," with e-democracy, Smart Mobs, street journalism, and the world of Second Life. Also present was the world of the arts and of performance, with concerts, video-art, multimedia installations, music, dance, and theater.
The key word was always "participation," with workshops, laboratories, and meetings, and plenty of space for interaction. Among the more interesting initiatives was an experiment in choral composition over the internet, promoted by the Film Commission of Tuscany and the Fondazione Sistema Toscana, in which people who surfed the web could participate. The final story, the result of both compositions and decompositions in progress, would become the subject of a "film" to circulate on Second Life with actor-avatars.
In an atmosphere of such great creative ferment, in which the urges to collect and to jot things down are abundant, Moleskine provides just the right thing with its Agenda of Creativity 2008. It is personalized for the festival and contains a booklet for "creative notes," or things to jog the memory, phrases and drawings.
The booklet is the result of a graphic project by Pescepensatore_Francesca Pellegrini with contributions by, among others, Andrea Rauch (paper band illustration), Guido Scarabattolo (interior illustrations), and Gabriella Giandelli (cover illustration).
For further info: www.festivaldellacreatività.it
