Target location: Italy
Target audience: Anyone who speaks Italian and needs to laugh, dream, relax and hope. The combination of all elements (literature, theatre, art, music and astronomy) present in this project has the potential to make the content suitable for a wide audience including kids and young adults. Moreover, the recordings will be publicly available on-line, in several platforms, including the Italian national radio, RAI, to ensure they are easily accessible.
The project will record five short stories by world-renowned writer Italo Calvino, taken from the book ‘Cosmicomics’, inspired by astronomical facts, and commented on by several astronomers. The poetic and imaginative description of complex astrophysical concepts in the book provides a powerful cue to introduce various fascinating aspects of astronomy through literature, making the content suitable for a wide audience including children and young adults. The recordings, accompanied by original soundtracks and drawings, will be made publicly available online. The combination of Calvino’s wisdom and sobering irony, the sublime relativity of the various astronomical subjects, the professional voice acting by Claudio Casadio, and the creative interpretation of the artists, will help lift the spirit of the target audience, especially in these dire times. Ultimately, the project hopes to remind the listener of the importance of maintaining perspective and faith in human collaboration, both through scientific inquiry, as well as the arts.