Looking back on Italian Week | Department of Languages, Cultures and Film

A group of people sit in the language lounge during an Italian Week event

Last week, we celebrated Italian Language week! In this blog, we will delve into some of the wonderful activities our School hosted surrounding this year’s theme; ‘Italian and Sustainability’.

A little History behind Italian Week

Italian Week is an annual event under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, involving a global network of Italian Cultural Institutions, language departments, schools, and associations. Each year, a different theme is selected. Some themes of the last few years have included:

Language and the web
Design and Fashion
“L’Italiano sul palcoscenico” (Italian on the stage)

And this year, we had the pleasure of focusing completely on Italian and Sustainability.

Our programme

Our opening event discussed the research carried out at the Department of Architecture and Design of the Politecnico of Turin. Scholars and students of Turin and Liverpool talked about their work and engaged in conversation with the audience. Many questions and ideas were explored and challenged, including 'How can we imagine alternative forms of heritage communities that are socially and culturally sustainable?'. The projects featured by Prof Riccardo Rudiero (Politecnico of Turin) at the event on Heritage communities can be accessed here.

An image taken in the Language lounge during a Sustainability lecture

On Tuesday, we had a film screening of Siccita' (2022), a dystopian film that was hosted by Dr Marco Paoli, Senior Lecturer in Italian and Film Studies, who discussed the themes and intentions behind its release. This was then followed by '100 years of Italo Calvino' on Thursday, where the professional actor, Andrea Castellini read from various works by Calvino, focusing on his environment-orientated texts.

A delightful end to the week

Italian week was then finished off with a wonderful performance by the Sicilian duo, Palmieri-Sciacca (oboe and guitar), who performed both classical and contemporary repertoire of Italian composers conceived from the historic homes and castles of Mussumeli, Butera, Pietrarossa and Moncada. This music resonated from a land disfigured by building speculation but also laboriously trying to rediscover its beautiful and rich heritage. It was a delightful end to the week, and an extract of their performance can be heard in the video below:

Join us next year as we celebrate all things Italian in Italian week 2024!