Our crowdfunding campaign not only allowed us to raise $20,000 in private donations; it also helped us garner the attention of a number of people and organizations interested in the topic of creating harmony between people and their “place”.

Some people call this topic “placemaking“. It’s an intersection between urbanism, sociology, environmentalism, sustainability and civic engagement. Professionals who are active in this realm seem genuinely intrigued that we’re making a film that touches upon many of the topics that they wrestle with on a daily basis.

Several authoritative voices within the “placemaking” community interviewed us and covered our film in their respective social media venues. Here’s a sampling of some of the really nice coverage we’ve received in the past month or two:

piece by Chuck Wolfe (MyUrbanist) that appeared in TheAtlantic.com 

piece by Kaid Benfield that appeared on his NRDC Switchboard blog (and subsequently picked up by AtlanticCities)

podcast on Place Matters radio show, hosted by Dr. Katherine Loflin 

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During the last few months of 2011 we ran a campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo with the goal of raising at least $20,000. This would have allowed us to carry out several weeks of concentrated editing work plus defray some of our production costs, which up until now we the creative team have been paying out of our pockets. The campaign ended on December 31, 2011, and thanks to the generosity of 129 donors we managed to meet our really ambitious goal and raised $20, 581. This means that we’ll soon be back in the editing room, working on distilling our 4000 minutes of footage into a 90-minute film.

We’re absolutely delighted with how the campaign went and also delighted that it’s over. It was an incredibly time-consuming and all-around challenging experience, but also gratifying on many levels. Besides the much-needed funds it allow us to raise, it also helped us expand our reach. We’re in touch with a growing number of people and organizations interested in what we’re doing and who feel an affinity for the messages we’d like to spread via our film.

We’re more grateful than we can say to the donors who believe in what we’re doing enough to support our work.

The campaign page is chock-full of information and hyperlinks to video clips or other social media sites, so if you’d like to know more about our film-in-the-making, you might want to check it out here.

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While visiting Cortona last week, Jeremy Irons was kind enough to share with us his thoughts on why places of beauty tend to disappear and what we can do to save them.

Together we can do a great deal:
Jeremy Irons pinpoints our constant desire for new things and our economic game in which profits prevail over beauty as main threats to special places. Often we’re made to feel disenfranchised and yet, if we’d like, we can protect the places we care about. He says that we as individuals, either separately or banding together in groups, have more power than we realize.

For Jeremy, places do not necessarily need to grow to survive. Rather they need to breathe, be nurtured so they can mature and become wise, just like people. For those of us who would like to care for places we love, the first step is to listen very deeply. By doing so, we will understand the needs of that particular place.

By clicking here, you’ll see a miniclip from the interview.  http://youtu.be/0lVPRHYycmk

You’ll see more in the finished film!

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This brings topics examined by “The Genius of a Place” to the forefront. The film takes a different approach to the book, though. Rather than denouncing an unhappy trend, one in which people aren’t paying much attention to what they are doing to places that they love, it encourages viewers to reflect on how they can become stewards of the places of beauty, both as residents and visitors. This is true not only of Italy, but of places in every corner of our marvelous and fragile planet.

In any event, the creative team behind The Genius is delighted that these two well-known reporters have sent such a strong signal to the Italian public about the importance of conservation.

If you’d like to see the original article, click here:
http://www.corriere.it/cronache/11_febbraio_11/stella-italia-distrugge-bellezza-turismo-rizzo_8abd5e3c-35a6-11e0-9a90-00144f486ba6.shtml

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Check it out on www.arttrav.com/headline/cortona-genius-of-a-place-interview/

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Moreover, he happens to come from Cortona.

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Sarah Marder discusses the challenges of balancing development and conservation

Professor Paola Dubini hosts Sarah Marder in her graduate course on Governance and Strategy in Cultural Firms and Institutions

On March 15, Sarah Marder spent an hour with 80 graduate students as guest speaker in the school’s class in Governance and Strategy in Cultural Firms and Institutions. Marder had been invited in by Professor Paola Dubini, Director of Bocconi’s ASK Research Center, an arm of the university which carries out studies on matters related to cultural management and planning.

After watching the film’s trailer, the class engaged in an hour-long debate about how to capitalize on the value cultural heritage in a way that is beneficial for the residents of the place and also respectful of the place’s heritage, reflecting mainly on what sort of tourism a community should promote.  After gathering many different points of view, Marder and Dubini concurred that there are no general answers.  They and students agreed that a successful approach required the active participation of residents and visitors alike.  “Caring for a place’s heritage is an act of citizenship , everyone needs to contribute in their own particular way.  This movie seems like a wonderful instrument to make wider audiences aware of that,” Dubini told Marder, at the end of the class.

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image courtesy of Bell’Italia magazine

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On January 28, Max, Sarah and Andrea were interviewed on Park City TV, during the Sundance Film Festival.

It was a great opportunity for us to talk about The Genius of a Place. We explained why we think that tourism can threaten the very essense of certain communities such as Cortona, a small Tuscan hilltown we’re using as our main subject. Once they’re on the map as popular tourist destinations, places such as Cortona risk becoming victims of their own success. They can lose their charm and their resources can be put under severe strain.

Since we’d like to avoid that, The Genius of a Place will encourage residents and visitors alike to become more protective of places they love. In this way, we hope they can achieve a balance between development and conservation, rather than allowing an unbridled process of “touristification” degrade a place’s cultural or natural resources.

As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…
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Mountain Morning Show – Sundance Edition
Park City, Utah (main location of the Sundance Film Festival)

Footage courtesy of Park City TV

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Residents are divided over differing visions for the city and debate about how to balance the free market economy and democratization of tourism with a sense of local identity in the world’s most fragile city. Read the article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/europe/15venice.html?_r=1

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