CoviDiaries
To create a narrative of the pandemic and a “memory space,” to open a reflection on the transformations that the collective Covid experience has brought to our societies and how to deal with them in the future, to engage and reach a multi-stakeholder target audience, to carry out a cross-media and phygital project, and to plan a wide-ranging and time-distributed dissemination strategy.
A great choral narrative, many goals achieved by a project that has gradually evolved, taking different forms.
Starting with the stories of Parallelozero’s photojournalists and videomakers and the covers published by the most prestigious Italian and international newspapers, the project’s strategic and dissemination plan developed over a two-year period through a series of phases that broadened its scope, involving increasingly broad and ambitious media, interlocutors, audiences, places and narrative languages.
The first phase of the project began with the creation of the portal www.covidiaries.it: a place for memory that collects 13 narrative and photojournalistic lines, interactive maps, a chronology of the pandemic and a series of mini-docs, including “Covid Hotel” and “The mindfulness of survivors.”
For the launch, all stakeholders involved in the CoviDiaries stories (entities, institutions, NGOs, companies) were involved, and two major collaborations were created.
The media partnership with the daily newspaper La Stampa, which saw a series of releases on its channels (print edition, digital, social media) in which CoviDiaries images and mini-docs were accompanied by articles signed by the newspaper’s most prestigious columnists, including Giuseppe Culicchia and Gianluca Nicoletti.
And a “sound partnership” with the band Casino Royale and Alioscia Bisceglia: tracks from “Quarantine Scenario” (a record created during the lockdown itself and recorded remotely by the musicians, with prestigious collaborations such as Howie B, DJ Gruff, Alessandro Baricco and many others) soundtrack the 13 thematic “rooms” of CoviDiaries.
After exploring different frontiers of cross-media and steadily enriching itself with new photojournalistic stories, the project evolved in exhibition forms, becoming phygital and following the gradual return to physical participation after the lockdown.
The first exhibition project took place in Bergamo, a highly symbolic place: Fotografica/Festival della Fotografia dedicated a special edition and a double exhibition to CoviDiaries in Piazza Vittorio Veneto and at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital.
The second exhibition was in Turin, on the occasion of the International Book Fair’s return to presence, with a record-breaking edition that drew more than 150,000 visitors.
Thanks to a further expansion of partnerships and collaborations – with the support of Fondazione Comunità Milano and Vivisol-Sol Group and the patronage of the City of Milan – CoviDiaries experienced a subsequent evolution in the prestigious Milan location of the Fabbrica del Vapore Cathedral.
Exactly two years after the start of the pandemic, the free admission exhibition-event “Covidiaries. Chronicle | Memory | Future,” welcomed 2,000 visitors and became a public opportunity to reflect on the transformations the pandemic has brought to our societies and – most importantly – to find new solutions for the future.
Four high-profile thematic panels involved prominent experts and representatives in different fields (medical doctors, researchers, politicians, entrepreneurs, academics, musicians – such as Diodato, winner of the Sanremo Festival – and many others) who discussed new poverty and welfare, sociality and youth, culture and entertainment, local and global health, and labor and business.
A project born in the field, on the streets of Codogno, Nembro and Milan from the very first days of the pandemic, which over time has evolved spontaneously (taking many different forms and reaching an increasingly wide audience) and has become a valuable “memory box” on the pandemic in Italy destined to remain an important reference point in the country’s future.
To learn more, visit the official website www.covidiaries.it.
