There is a city: nobody must feel escluded

La compagnia dei Celestini was founded by a group of friends in May 2001. This company started in a very informal way to think about the city and to suggest initiatives in order to involve people in the discussions of town palnning matters. They want to reach everybody, not only those who work in that particular sector, in order to make "urban culture" become a part of everyday life. For them it was important to create this kind of consciousness because the city owns to anyone who lives in the city and anyone who lives in the city is responsible of it.The motivations which guided La compagnia dei Celestini until today are stated in their Manifesto which summarizes their principles since 2003, the year in which they become a cultural association.

From 2001 to 2005 has been organized: seminars on history of Bologna town planning from 1985 to 2000 (November 2001); seminars on mobility and on strategic choices made for the mobility in Bologna (November 2001); once a public space was used to narrate the city and town planning in an unusual way with unusual equipment, that was less technical and funnier like multi-sensorial and interactive installations and gastronomical experiences which the city as main theme (June 2002); at the end, a laboratory of town planning for the zone called Staveco which has been recently dismantled (May 2004).

As the most important aim of La compagnia dei Celestini there is a "public action which has to contribute in making Bologna more livable, beautiful, solidly, free and democratic". What joins the members of the association is "the conviction that the city and its territory are a common property, in which the essential goods for a quality life can not be the result of single interests, but a conscious public responsibility. Single citizens' interests are the dynamical element of the city and of the territory, but they have to be finalized to the common good: the point is that virtuous behaviors have to be awarded and those depraved have to be penalized." 

Here are the engagements of La compagnia dei Celestini listed in their Manifesto. In Bologna La compagnia dei Celestini wants:
• The city to be a place mostly destined to the social and civic exchange between people of every age, sex, wealth or ethnic group;
• A system of shared, transparent and democratic rules for the use of territory. Those rules has to be based on primary rights of citizens like health, mobility, cultural independence, house, social security and solidarity;
• To take care of public spaces in order to make them be attractive, secure and at everyone's hand, most of all it is important for the weakest and most vulnerable members of the community;
• A better urban space, characterized by a clean air, bigger and more accessible green spaces, less noise, more plazas, sidewalks, cycle tracks and places where it is easier to meet and communicate; nice houses which do not cost too much, a lively historical center without cars, but with efficient public transport;
• A mobility which is compatible with the health and the security of citizens and with the environmental protection.

La compagnia wants to fight:
• Urban egoism and the abuse of power;
• Politics, done without civic passion and public responsibility, that privileges individual interests instead the common wealth;
• The ideology on intervention "case by case" which dismantels the system of rules in which citizens can recognize themselves, protect themselves and act;
• The masks under which banal real estate politics are presented, always updated according to the latest fashion, but mostly same in their purposes; 
• Sectional urban politics which are becoming more and more dangerous for the life of citizens but which have nothing to do with the unique and organic character of the city;
• The lack of formal unity which characterizes all the projects for the city and the non interest in realization and management of public spaces; 
• The lack of security on the streets which obliges the city to pay every year an inadmissible price of dead, wounded and material damage.

La compagnia dei Celestini's initiatives were the base for some dossiers:
• "Dal piano regolatore la piano regalatore" (2002) - a dossier on recent urban transformations - seminary acts 
• "Il ferro fa bene ai bambini" (2003) - a dossier which analyzes and valutes the five projects proposed for the mobility in Bologna (Passante autostradale nord, Servizio Ferroviario Metropolitano, Metropolitana Automatica, Tram su Gomma, Tram-Metrò) - seminary acts.
• "C'è una città, nessuno si senta escluso" - dossier which presents possible politics for a new urban design of Bologna.
In order to represent in video some themes discussed by the association and to present them to a wide public, some still images have been used to compose sequences that deals with urban scenes to which music and subtitles has been added.