Luigi Ferrara: culture as a powerful force for good

“I think that culture can act as a powerful force for good and for protection and for support of people“. Luigi Ferrara is a Canadian architect and designer. He is also the Dean of the Centre for Arts, Design & Information Technology at George Brown College Toronto and the Director of GBC Institute without Boundaries. Since 2007 the organizations Ferrara leads are the MEET’s major partners in the international panorama.

While experiencing self-isolation in Toronto, Luigi shared with MEET’s team a short video on the opportunities the Covid-19 pandemic is opening to preserve, promote and disseminate cultural activities.

“While we are in a severe moment of challenge, we are starting to realize how important our digital connectivity is when we’re facing a global crisis. Over the last number of years, we’ve experienced some of the negative impacts of digital connectivity and digital culture. At this moment, I think we’re starting to understand the powerful use of digital tools to combat a difficult situation in this pandemic and more importantly how we are going to need to reconsider our culture in the future and use these tools to create new form of culture”.

Ferrara thinks that, more than ever, Italy will need to imagine a path that is not so tourism and event reliant. “For me the MEET is a critical opening for Italy. It will speak to Italy’s need to re-imagine their systems, their infrastructure and to bring the long awaited reality of a new kind of cultural economy based on knowledge and research and collaboration and connection with the rest of the world“.

Ferrara ends off his video recalling Martin Luther King’s quotation about the world house we are all living in: “I call on you to welcome everyone into your world house to work with everyone to get our planet to a better place to confront the challenges that we have whether it be a pandemic or climate change or problems of migration, problems of economic equity, problems of understanding one another”.