Municipality of Carrara accepts MiC funding. Green light for the Sculpting the Wind project.

The Municipality of Carrara has given the green light to Francesco Bartoli ’s Sculpting the Wind project, thus accepting the 61,150 grant that at first seemed to have been rejected. Mayor Serena Arrighi and Culture Councillor Gea Dazzi, after receiving from the author, Francesco Bartoli, and MudaC director Laura Barreca (the project’s scientific contact person) the requested clarifications on some economic and organizational aspects related to the realization of the work, formalized the acceptance of the 61,150 grant from the Ministry of Culture under the 2021 edition of the PAC - Contemporary Art Plan.

Bartoli and Barreca explained in a letter how the institutions involved in the project will be MudaC, theAcademy of Fine Arts in Carrara, the State Museum for the Blind ’Omero’ in Ancona, the Garibaldi Cinema in Carrara, and civic associations in the area (contacted during the course of the project). To these must then be added professionals and sculpture studios from the area involved in filming and organization, namely: Laura Barreca (project curator and scientific director mudaC), Luciano Massari (director Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara) and professors of the Academy to be contacted in the course of the project’s implementation (Audio Video chair, Sculpture chair), Rolando Alberti (poet - pastor of Forno), Diego Zampolini, Raffaele Bruzzi and Riccardo Barsottini (Coop Sculptors of Carrara), Andrea D’Aurizio (sculptor from Pietrasanta), Poletti and Ghio sculpture studio from Carrara, Stagetti sculpture studio from Pietrasanta, Villaggio Barsanti from Pietrasanta, Enrico Medda (professor of Greek literature University of Pisa), Fabrizio Pacini (location manager Flyciak Sarzana and Carrara). “The MudaC,” the artist and curator explain, "will host a temporary exhibition that will include the screening of a film, a sculpture, photographic prints, drawings and sketches or other material inherent to the realization of the Sculpting the Wind project, useful to the exhibition narrative."

Laura Barreca, on the other hand, will be the curator of the exhibition, the catalog and the public program of meetings, making use of external collaborators to whom she will entrust the organization of the activities, the identification of which is to be agreed upon with the Culture Office and the Department of Culture. The Academy of Fine Arts will host the visual arts course taught by visual artist Francesco Bartoli with students in the fourth and fifth years of sculpture/video techniques; the Omero State Museum for the Blind in Ancona will host part of the filming dedicated to the chapter on sculpture and the blind; and the Garibaldi Cinema will host screenings and meetings with the public with the artist and some of the film’s protagonists according to a schedule prepared and agreed upon with the Culture office. Finally, sculpture studios will be involved in the filming.

On the other hand, as far as the economic aspects are concerned, the 61,150 euros of funding will be divided as follows: 14,500 euros will be earmarked for production or acquisition costs and of this 10,000 will be the artist’s share; 25.500 will be earmarked for project support personnel, i.e. production assistant-artist (1,000 euros), audio video technician and support on the ground (2,000), subject-photography-direction (10,500), editing (5,000), audio technician and editing studio (1,500), music and copyright (2,000), video post production (3,500). Another 9,500 euros will be earmarked for preservation and enhancement activities, and of these 3 thousand will go to the artistic direction of the project and exhibition, 2,500 will be used for set-up and assembly, one thousand for infographic printing, and 3 thousand for meetings, workshops and educational activities. The remaining 11,650 euros will be divided between promotion and communication expenses (5 thousand), administrative expenses and travel expenses for the artist and his assistant and for room and board for at least three weeks of work.

Finally, as for the commitments for the municipality, Bartoli and Barreca explain in their own report that they “will be responsible for the administrative management of the documentation to and from the Ministry of Culture, taking care of the reports and sending according to the schedule established by the Ministry of the project’s reporting documentation.”

“As we have always repeated,” the mayor and alderman explain, “it has never been our intention to enter into the merits of the contents of the work, but since it is not a project followed from the beginning by this administration, we had the need to ask the parties involved for some insights into the economic and organizational aspects. There is, after all, public money at stake, and we believe that even if no disbursements are envisaged directly by the municipality, it is the duty of an administration to do all the necessary checks on how it is spent. That is why after putting the project on standby, we immediately took action with the ministry in order to obtain an extension regarding the terms for accepting the funding. Once we received the positive opinion from Rome, we then asked the artist and the director of MudaC for all the numerical clarifications we needed. In particular, there were four questions we asked director Barreca and artist Bartoli: What institutions are involved in the art project? What roles and functions do the individuals and institutions involved have? How will the money resources allocated by the Ministry be allocated in detail? In the case of the implementation of a participatory process, how, with what burdens and timelines will the municipality be involved? Thus, in a few days, a written response arrived in which all these details were given. After careful analysis and discussion with the offices, we thus had the tools to be able to communicate the acceptance of the funding to the ministry in a more informed way. All this proves that it was never a question of content, but only of clarity and transparency, two aspects on which this administration will never deviate.”

Pictured is a room at MudaC.

Municipality of Carrara accepts MiC funding. Green light for the Sculpting the Wind project.

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