This year, as we know, it is Procida the Italian Capital of Culture 2022 and surely they will be many initiatives and events which will be organized during the year and which will attract tourists from all over Italy to the island who will discover all its beauties.
For the occasion, Poste Italiane has created a celebratory stamp in honor of Procida recalling the important concept that culture “frees”, therefore free. In fact, it makes us feel more and more free by expanding our views of the mountain.
The 22 symbolic letters
On the day of the presentation of the stamp, January 22, they were also sent 22 symbolic letters directly from the island and direct users. "Special". In this way, Procida begins its new year with the initiative “Culture does not isolate: it liberates”.
Letters have always been considered a privileged tool to communicate ideas and values of different types and these 22 letters "about the future" they have been sent to as many important personalities of the culture of our country, which we will reveal below.
The content of the letter
Here is what is written in this special letter.
Dear friend, dear friend,
2022 for the community of the island of Procida is the year of an important appointment. A tight year in a future horizon still uncertain but at the same time full of hope. Procida, the Italian Capital of Culture, is looking at that horizon. A small community that looks forward, proudly aware of his creative potential, aware of a challenge that opens up unprecedented scenarios with a powerful symbolic value.
On the small island of Procida generations speak to each other: individuals are one with their land and community. It is these deep and indissoluble bonds between people and their habitat that nourish a dense heritage, material and immaterial, which creates bridges between past, present and future.
From this particular condition comes one conception of culture capable of creating communities of solidarity, where the person and his needs are the center of a system of relationships, in which sustainability becomes a way of living and respecting the earth that allows us to exist.
But this is not enough.
In Procida we have always lived also by exchanges, the very essence of our existence. So, to inspire our vision of tomorrow, we chose you and 21 other people, bearers of stories of courage, inclusion, freedom, sustainability e imagination.
For this, dear friend, dear friend, we write to you and ask you: what is culture for you?
How can this value dimension respond to the challenges of the time to come? When and how can culture become an instrument of the common good and not just a mere diversion?We would be happy to welcome you to Procida, to tell both our small community surrounded by the sea and the wider community that our project will be able to aggregate, how this can be consolidated in the construction of a heritage that breaks down the barriers to build bridges.
A heritage to be returned to everyone and, above all, to the world of tomorrow.
Procida 2022
Italian Capital of Culture
The important recipients
Here is who they were sent to:
- Samantha Cristoforetti - Italian astronaut and aviator
- Ilaria Cucchi - Activist, committed to the rehabilitation of the name of his brother Stefano, who died in prison
- Emergency - Humanitarian association founded by Gino Strada
- Papa Francesco
- Philippo Grandi - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- Haoua - Sprar guest of Procida
- Antonio LaCava - Street teacher
- Lisca Bianca - Non-profit organization to promote the social and work inclusion of disadvantaged young people
- Malala Yousafzai - Pakistani activist and blogger, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014
- Sergio Mattarella - President of the Italian Republic
- Bartolo Mercuri - Former inmate
- Dmitry Muratov - Russian journalist editor of Novaya Gazeta and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2021
- George Parisi - Italian physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2021
- Vincenzo Partinico - Fisherman of Lampedusa, he saved the lives of dozens of migrants
- Mirella La Magna Pignataro - Founder of GRIDAS, an anticamorra cultural center in Secondigliano and Scampia
- Verónica Plebani - Italian canoeist, snowboarder and triathlete in Paralympic competitions
- Liliana Segre - Italian activist and politician, Holocaust survivor and witness to the Shoah
- Aboubakar Soumahoro - trade unionist of the Agricultural Coordination of the Union of Base
- Greta Thunberg - Swedish activist, symbol of youth environmentalism
- Patrick Zaki - Egyptian activist and student, in prison from 7 February 2020 to 8 December 2021
- Ai Weiwei - Chinese artist, designer, activist, architect and director
- The Whirpool workers
