by Niccolo Milanese, London Festival of Europe organiser
The London Festival of Europe was thought of in ideal conditions for European dreaming: over red-wine and pasta al dente, outside a back-street restaurant, under the Raffaello-blue summer sky of Rome. I was living in Siena, and had come to Rome with my visiting cousin to meet Lorenzo, who had returned to his home city from London for the summer months. As we always have, we shared our frustrations over European politics. Still, Prodi had just won the elections, and perhaps the combination of that, the beauty of the evening – the day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, as it turned out – the wine and the presence of my young cousin conjured sufficient hope that we resolved we must do something to help transform the situation.
What we should do was to hold a couple of events in London: we both knew that the myth of Britain being completely detached from Europe is nowhere less true than in London, in particular amongst the artistic community, and that there is potential and enthusiasm for change in this most cosmopolitan city of the world. Furthermore, we resolved that the vision of Europe embodied in the events should be one of Europe configured to include the world, that it makes no sense to draw geographical boundaries of Europe, since all the world is already here, just as all the world is also already outside: cosmopolitanism is for both of us an extremely high value.
We certainly worked on the idea in the most cosmopolitan of ways: I returned to London whilst Lorenzo went to Istanbul, then Lorenzo to London, I to Paris, Lorenzo to China, I back to London, Lorenzo to Rome then London, I to Paris and Zurich … the festival would have been impossible without e-mail. It was only a few month into the process that we realised the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome was in March the following year, and quite how much enthusiasm there was amongst various institutions – particularly cultural and artistic – in London for something along the lines we were thinking. Soon we were talking about several events, and then a week’s worth, then finally two-week’s worth and events embracing the political, artistic and philosophical, and were having consistent success in inspiring people with the idea that something should be done.
Throughout this time our committee and team of helpers grew ever larger and ever more cosmopolitan, to now include people in London from Romania, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, Australia, Canada, Poland, France … Looking back now I regret we didn’t find all these people earlier: they all bring different ideas and new energy. The entire point of the festival is to open up public spaces for debate of European issues; as we sit down around restaurant tables and stand at bars together, I feel we’ve already achieved something in the people we’ve pulled together to run it.
Here in London, four days before the festival is opened by Zygmunt Bauman on Monday 19th, I look away from my bulging e-mail inbox, see the quite unusually blue skies and still feel the utopian hopefulness of the project. I’m not worried about the organisation of the festival itself now – all that can be done has been done – I’m only worried about getting our message across without it being too distorted. The French poet Paul Valéry wrote of Europe as being a giant machine which runs on dreams and transforms the world around it. I’m eager that the energy we’ve generated and will generate at a much higher voltage over the next two weeks shouldn’t be misused or lost.
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