Free entry until all seats are filled. English with simultaneous interpretation.

Teatro Valle Occupato: Culture as a common good

Virginia Benvenuti is a member of the assembly that manages the Teatro Valle Commons Foundation, which was founded in 2011 with the occupation of Rome’s oldest theatre, the Teatro del Valle, which was in danger of being privatised. It began as a project to provide a space in which to develop practices that were related to the common good. This gave way to the creation of an “institution for common goods”, whose slogan was: “Like the water, like the air, culture is ours”.

On 31 July 2014, Roman municipal authorities requested that the building be evicted. After an extraordinarily long assembly, they decided to abandon the space and began negotiations with institutions regarding a new ways of governing cultural institutions from the bottom up. Teatro del Valle Occupato received the UBU prize, Italy’s top award for theater, the 2014 Princess Margriet Award from the European Cultural Foundation.

www.teatrovalleoccupato.it