Olivetti Prize for cultural accessibility: call open until 15 September

It is thought of as an opportunity to bring culture back where it has been missing for too long. The challenge of the Olivetti Prize for cultural accessibility passes through the call that the Ministry of Culture has launched as part of the Olivetti Plan and which will close the applications on 15 September, a measure that tries to translate into concrete projects the idea according to which culture should not be the privilege of a few but a right of citizenship.

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The announcement was adopted by executive decree of the Central Institute for the economic valorisation and promotion of cultural heritage on 17 June, implementing a ministerial decree of April and the provisions of the 2026 Budget Law. Its declared objective is to counteract what the text defines as "cultural drought", i.e. the structural lack of opportunities for access, participation and enjoyment of culture, while at the same time encouraging the regeneration of suburbs, internal areas and territories marked by social and economic marginality. The value system explicitly recalls Olivetti's thinking, for which culture was a factor of personal dignity and social cohesion, and the principles of the Faro Convention.

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The four sections

The axes of action required of the candidate projects derive from here: the fight against cultural drought, the strengthening of community participation, the use of new technologies for inclusive access, innovation in the creative sectors, the sustainability of results over time and the diffusion of replicable good practices. The award is divided into four sections, each with its own scope of intervention.

The first concerns museums, cultural heritage and territory, and brings together projects that aim to redefine the role of museums, archaeological parks, places of culture, conservation institutes, archives and libraries, understood not as simple containers but as civil and educational facilities rooted in the territory, capable of generating urban regeneration, a sense of belonging and active citizenship. The second is dedicated to cultural activities, therefore to festivals, film and theater reviews, live entertainment events, literary reviews and ongoing programs to promote reading: here the guiding criterion is the systematic removal of physical, sensorial, cognitive, economic and social barriers that prevent participation.

We then move on to the part reserved exclusively for public or private businesses and companies, in which corporate welfare projects with a strong cultural content are selected, designed to increase the cultural and relational well-being of workers with an impact that also extends to the territory in which the company operates. To close the internal chapter of the MiC reserved for offices, central and peripheral institutes and places of culture belonging to the ministry for the experimentation of cutting-edge management models in terms of accessibility (given the internal nature of the subjects involved, it does not provide for the assignment of financial resources).