Spreading the sustainable paradigm, uniting all the arts and science in the name of nature. This is the goal of ‘Umbria Green Festival’ which, from August 22nd to September 28th, will touch the cities of Assisi, Perugia, Terni, Narni, Orvieto, Rasiglia (Foligno), Deruta, Acquasparta and Montecastello di Vibio with many events scheduled including exclusive productions, world premieres, new formats and real sustainable development projects to support the territory. A real artistic project that brings together energy and environmental experts, scientists, artists and philosophers to tell the future.
Great guests are expected, starting with Alessandro Baricco (in collaboration with Cortile di Francesco), Marco Paolini, Alessandro Quarta, Nicola Piovani (in collaboration with the Festival della Piana del Cavaliere), Antonella Viola, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Telmo Pievani, Antonio Rinaldo (Stockholm Water Prize 2023), Carlotta Vagnoli, Loredana Lipperini and 100 other artists of national and international level. “Umbria Green Festival is a reality in continuous transformation that has within it stories to tell, dreams, projects, ideas to cultivate hope in a sustainable future”, comments the artistic director Daniele Zepparelli.
“The environmentalism of the future will necessarily have to represent a new humanism. All the formats we create are moving in this direction – he continues – from ‘Risorgive Letterarie’ to ‘Rasiglia’ which focuses on objectives 5 and 10 of the 2030 agenda and which is having incredible success, up to the ‘Silent Concert’ at the Cascata delle Marmore or the ‘Fabbrica del Mondo, the television event created by Marco Paolini and Telmo Pievani that we have been bringing to Umbria for two years now, also supported by Auri Umbria within the project ‘La via dell’acqua’, created in collaboration with Isola Prossima, the Arpa Umbria culture and sustainability festival”.
Furthermore, “we have opened this happy collaboration with the Sacred Convent of Assisi and with the Courtyard of Francis. We will host Alessandro Baricco – explains the artistic director – for a lectio in absolute first in Italy, already sold out and with over 1500 people who have booked, at the Piazza della Basilica Superiore of Assisi. For the occasion, Baricco will hold a conference on the theme of mind/body to follow the red thread of the Franciscan centenaries. 2024 is in fact a year linked to the centenary of the stigmata from which the main theme that will be traced by the author through some key words derives: mind, body, self-care, transformation, encounter, future, well-being”.
Umbria Green Festival is a true container of good practices that seeks to offset the emissions produced by individual events, attempting to implement innovative and unique measures, investing and believing in sustainable technological change: “Creating a zero-impact event – says the general manager of the Festival Cristiano Cinti – means reducing to a minimum the environmental impact generated during all phases of the event, including planning, organization and execution. In our sustainability report we promote energy efficiency, we try to explain how in events it is necessary to use low-energy consumption equipment, LED lighting and renewable energy sources when possible. We explain how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by offsetting them with actions – Cinti details – such as the creation of photovoltaic systems or the purchase of carbon credits or by fixing up entire urban areas as we have done with the cloister of Santa Maria delle Grazie, with the Gardens of Viale della Rinascita and with the Bruno Caligani Park in Terni, or by using only electric cars for travel and installing electric charging columns”.
Since last year “we have been collaborating with ‘Wami: Water with a mission’, a mineral water company and brand that builds water projects in villages without access to drinking water. We will donate another 2 million liters of water to a family in the Rockwood region of Sri Lanka”, concludes Cinti. Umbria Green Festival has always involved students from schools of all levels in the Region with the Sustainability Village and with dedicated activities, thanks also to the valuable contribution of the Garden Club of Terni and the project financed by Fondazione Carit: ‘Beauty will save the environment: towards a new terrestrial paradigm’. “Our mission – says Luciano Zepparelli, sole director of Techne srl, a company among the organizers – is the implementation of a Copernican revolution to put listening to our needs and those of the planet back at the center; to do so, it is necessary to trigger a revolution that is first and foremost cultural, which passes through empathy and emotional involvement, stimulating the awareness of the individual”.