INTERNATIONAL AWARD OF

WITNESSES OF POPULAR CULTURE

One of the aims of the Italian Network of Popular Culture is to identify and let know those players who could cultivate the tradition and repropose it through a wise contamination between conservation and innovation.

The Italian network of Popular Culture calls them “ witnesses”, because of their ability to witness the inherited culture, which they are preparing to transmit to new generations, in an updated dynamism, modernity and innovation.

In order to create conditions for promoting and disseminating popular culture and offering appropriate recognition and visibility to its witnesses, the Network has established two important projects: the Award of Witnesses and Itinerant Chairs of Popular Culture.

The project of “ Witnesses of Popular Culture was born in Italy in 2005.

The witnesses are chosen and awarded with the supervision of a Scientific Committee. The work of the Committee is to identify them, know them and establish activities of communication, performing, training, publishing, in order to let the culture they represent not be disappeared but be passed, as a witness, to the new generations of future memory.

The witness must have some basic requirements to be nominated for the prize, and thus to enter the committee program of promotion and valorization.

1) He must show his genuine tie with the territory, which is expression of the tradition, and be holder of this territory for:

- memory

- tradition

- continuity

- repropose.

2) He must be able to express Popular Culture of the territory by:

- performative artistic principles

- etno-demoanthropological principles

- craftmade principles.

3) He must ensure the traceability of its searching path.

4) He must feel the need to “ pass the witness” of his knowledge to younger generations, so that the tradition can be transmitted and renewed with respect and coherence. To this end, the witness must encourage this process of training, by joining the initiatives proposed by the Committee or through the most appropriate ways.

Promotion and valorization of the Witnesses is possible through:

- The prizegiving of Popular Culture

- Teaching of the Itinerant Chair of Popular Culture

- Conferences and seminars

- Right of use of the mark “ Witness of Popular Culture”

- Publications and editorial projects

- Presence in the most important national events

- Publication of the best degree thesis, which have as object one or more witnesses of Popular Culture

- Sensitization in public and private bodies of cultural promotion, schools and research institutes.

In 2005 six witnesses were awarded. They expressed culture and traditions from different territories: from Sicily, with the Opera of Pupi by Tury Grasso, to Apulia, with Uccio Aloisi and the Singers from Carpino, from Latium, with the Spontaneous Group of  Canti a Braccio in eighth rhyme, to Piedmont, with the Bajolese Choir and Spontaneous Group of Magliano Alfieri.

In 2006 the Network has proposed six new important “aids”: Giovanna Marini, Gipo Farassino, Masino Anghilante, cousins Nigro and Pete Seeger. Then, it was also established a Special Award for the research and documentation on Popular Culture, which will be delivered by Tonino Guerra,  a world famous poet, writer and screenwriter.

These cultural “aids” represent the authenticity of the roots, a strong conviction, which came often from stories of poverty, but that has never abdicated his dignity and always was sure that time would have given it reason.

We just wanted to call them “ cultural aids”, in analogy with those wine-and-food jewels saved by “ Slow Food”. They have some common characteristics with cultural aids: for example the preciousness and the risk of loss. They are genuine and very fragile “ living libraries”, as the great Jorge Luis Borges defined them.

For us, they are “ witnesses” because of their ability of transformation, which means dynamism, evolution, modernity, tendency to the introduction of innovative elements.