Topic for Working Group D - Relations with public institutions
How can you relate to public institutions (primarily the municipality), establish cooperation and handle conflicts? How to convince these bodies - go to confrontation or negociate? Use the press, community and try to make a scandal or win the politicians on your side? What would be the long term strategies and the short term strategies?
Members:
ANDREA GANCS (A38, Budapest)
ALESSANDRA BIANCO (BUENAVENTURA)
FAZETTE BORDAGE (MAINS D'OEUVRES)
ROBERTO STORTOLANI (BUENAVENTURA)
WILLI REICHEL (Z BAU)
NONA CIOBANU (TOACA STUDIO)
ALEX VEITCH (MEJERIET)
LAURA GALVAN (BUENAVENTURA)
FILIPPO DI GIACOMO (BUENAVENTURA) - VENICE-GROUP)
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Background information on behalf of Buenaventura for this Working Group
Today Buenaventura receive no support from neither the municipality nor the region. At several occasions the municipality has even worked AGAINST Buenaventura. The mayor has said to representatives that NGO:s do not have the same value to her; not all have morality enough. Generally speaking, Italy has a fantastic and great cultural heritage which has and is in focus for cultural policy meaning that the contemporary and alternative, independent art stand without substantial support.
In the past the Buenaventura have only gone to the town hall office when we have had a project that was already created, a project that was already in our hands. We only went there to go through bureaucratic proceedurs, not to talk to politicians. In the beginning of 1999, when Buenaventura started, there was no mayor in charge because of a collapse in the political system. The only thing that existed was the bureaucracy in itself. Trying to set up our cultural centre, these bureaucratical proceedures delayed the opening of Buenaventura for one year. (For your information, ten years ago the administrational laws changed in a way that gave more power to bureaucracy compared to the politicians. This was intended to give more responsibility to the local administration. But, as a matter of fact, this has lead to that now, local administration are often scared to make decisions and mostly say no when you ask for something or simply just don't respond to correspondence etc.).
Thanks to the help and the actions taken by a young lawyer (Roberto Stortolani, who a year later became a member of the board. Now he is the vice-president of Buenaventura and he will also be in this working group) we were able to solve the question of the opening of the Buenaventura by threatening to take the municipality to court.
Some of us think that the mayor, her party and all parties in general, even the left-winged feel a rivalty against the Buenaventura, because of the strength of and the number of members within the Buenaventura (4000 members from Castelfranco Veneto and surrounding cities in a town of 30 000 inhabitants on the country-side). Maybe they are scared that we will form a political party one day, and for sure they think that it is hard to control us. Of course, since the Buenaventura is run by young people, we suffer from every existing prejudice about cultural centres that you can find.
Two years ago, when we wanted to organise a concert in the main square, the town hall tried to boycott us using really ugly methods. Since we didn't feel welcome at all we decided to move the concert to the Buenaventura. The newspaper wrote a lot about the whole situation. Because of how it all came out in the newspapers the municipality later turned to us to try to negotiate and to involve us in working with the policies for young people in city. This, in the end, became another fight which also made it to the newspapers, since we, and all the other associations involved in this area in the vicinity, felt they were using us just to show to the region that they were doing something for young people in order to get money from the region. While preparing for the TEH-meeting in May we have realised T compromise. that the prejudice against us still exists. This is even worse considering that we are in election time (so when you arrive in May we might have a new mayor) and no political promises can be taken for granted. This means, that even if we have now been promised to host the meeting in a tent on the main square, after the elections the 3-4 of April it would be really easy for them to take back this promise.
The main challenge for the Buenaventura is to find an allied in public institutions who has the same aims and objectives as the Buenaventura. With public institutions we don't just mean the municipality, but also the province and the region. Keep in mind that for the Buenaventura, that is actually the opposite of what Macchiavelli wrote, the aim in this case does not justify the mean. Our unwillingness to compromise on this has often been confused with fundamentalism. However, we succeeded to create something that sounded impossible: a free and independent place that is functioning. It was hard, but we never compromised, and since we didn't for all this time, now it would feel stupid for us to do so.
Instructions on how to use the mailing list
Proposal of time plan before the meeting
Concept for Buenaventura meeting presented at the Berlin-TEH meeting
General tendencies in Italy by Elena di Stefano, from La Citta' del Teatro
Mailing list archive for this working group (you need a password: please ask the group leader, or read the bottom lines of each email sent within the mailing list)