FAI Days, with Covid (and no students working for free) only 1 in 5 places open

A muted edition, that of the FAI Days being celebrated today and tomorrow: they will not be “FAI Spring Days,” because it is summer and because in spring we were all locked in the house for lockdown, but they will be “FAI Outdoor Days” (this is the new name), which, however, will not reach the magnitude of the “traditional” days: there will be about 200 places open, compared to 1,100 in the 2019 edition of the FAI Spring Days (that is, one in five places compared to last year’s edition). Such a low number of sites opened by the Italian Environmental Fund has not been touched in a long time (consider that ten years ago there were 590, while to get to so few places we need to go back to the early days of the FAI Days of Spring, established in 1993).

Obviously, many places must remain closed because they cannot comply with the safety measures that containing the coronavirus infection still requires of us, but according to the association Mi Riconosci? I am a cultural heritage professional, which has always put FAI’s work under the magnifying glass, points out that this collapse of open places is probably also due to the inability to use students in school-to-work alternation. The training experience introduced in 2015 by the Renzi government (and which has now changed its name: no longer “alternanza scuola-lavoro,” but PCTO, or “Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e l’Orientamento” or Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation), and which provides a mandatory work period for all students in the last three years of high school, last year guaranteed 40,000 students to FAI, a huge free labor force that, according to the graphs released by Mi Riconosci, has caused the number of open places to rise from the 780 of the last edition without the alternating students (the one in 2015), it jumped to 900 the following year (a growth of 120 places: to achieve a par in absolute numbers without students, it had taken FAI five years), to the 1.000 in the 2017 and 2018 editions, and to 1,100 in the 2019 edition.

Not only that: according to Mi Riconosci, many retirees who make up the most “solid” base of FAI volunteers will decide not to serve this year due to understandable fears of contagion (since, as is now well known, Covid-19 affects mostly, and unfortunately with the most severe consequences, the elderly population). Then, of course, there are also contingent character reasons: for example, for this edition of FAI Days it will not be possible to show up directly at the sites without having reserved a place. In fact, this year compulsory reservation has been included, and there will also be no places open for free, since each participant will be required to pay a contribution in support of the foundation’s activities, set at €3 for FAI members and €5 for non-members (although there is the possibility of paying a larger sum at one’s discretion).

The FAI Open Days, the Fund points out, represent “an unrenounceable opportunity to raise funds, which will be entirely destined to allow us to continue the institutional activities of the Foundation,” which is why the collection took place in advance of the event taking place. These are funds that FAI redeploys in activities of maintenance and conservation of cultural property, whether owned by it or by third parties, but the Fund is challenged by the fact that, in the face of a budget that exceeds 30 million euros each year, FAI, in its 60 owned properties open all year round and in the hundreds that it regularly manages, makes use mainly of volunteers (there are about 8 thousand of them compared to 255 regularly employed employees). Volunteers who, while not going to replace workers (because otherwise the places where the volunteers work would simply close), guarantee a lot of income for the Foundation and provide, Mi Riconosci activists say, “free labor that acts as a stopper for the creation of paid work and lowers the wages of all workers thanks to the competition at the highest level and the availability of free labor. Fully in the market, as these events create money and revenue.”

FAI Days often arouse ill-feeling, precisely because of the contradictions arising from the vast employment of volunteers, the fact that FAI also operates in public places (for example, this year thanks to FAI it will be possible to open the secret gardens of the Borghese Gallery, one of the autonomous museums created with the Franceschini reform: this is a space normally closed to the public). Last year there was an outcry from the Students’ Union, which branded FAI’s operating methods toward students in alternation as “exploitation.” The year before, some Neapolitan students had protested against the FAI because they would in fact be forced by their teachers (under penalty of disciplinary action) to serve at a site opened by the FAI. And also in the same year there had been a back-and-forth between the director of Windows on Art, Federico Giannini, and the FAI vice president, Marco Magnifico, just around the Days. FAI had also granted, also in 2018, a meeting with the Mi Riconosci association, but despite this little has changed.

“From 1993 to the present, FAI,” the association concludes in a note, “thanks to the increase in the number of places involved in the spring and autumn FAI Days, has seen the funds raised increase year after year, benefiting from an international trend of growth in cultural consumption. For the past 4 years it has been able to count on tens of thousands of students in school-work alternation (mistakenly believed to be volunteers by most). Employment among Cultural Heritage workers and professionals has not increased for almost 30 years. Because of bad laws and political choices. Who needs these celebrations? Why is FAI not doing its part?”

Nellimmagine, a photograph taken during the 2017 FAI Spring Days at the Villa Saraceno in Finale di Agugliaro (Vicenza). Ph. Credit

FAI Days, with Covid (and no students working for free) only 1 in 5 places open

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