“Dear students, teachers and collaborators,
we had the good fortune not to experience the horrors of the war and to experience an Italy that was born from the economic boom, resourcefulness and talent. We had the opportunity of appreciating the beauty of the world, the people who make each place different and suggestive, but also to feel homesick. All of these sensations have changed and improved our approach to life, widening our horizons and perspectives.
Soon these feelings will become part of our futures again, but it is a privilege that we must regain, preventing an invisible but well-rooted and marked force from taking hold.
The Italian government has launched restrictive, clear and precise measures to contain the spread of Coronaviruses. We all have to stick to these rules. The entire RUFA community is working to meet the needs of students and families, giving shape and substance to supplementary learning methodologies. The #IORESTOACASA hashtag should not be experienced as a deprivation. It is a concept that must evolve, and not be thought as not sharing our time with friends, partners and relatives directly, but as an opportunity to think and reflect, reaction and action.
Life is Beautiful. And it is intellectually stimulating to think that one can dare to change, to look for different paths. These are the paths of intellect and passion that can always be walked: even while staying in your own home or studio.
After all, artists have always imagined the future, anticipating it and building it. This is a path that now sees us all involved together, without distinctions, without prejudices, as individual members of a humanity ready to rediscover itself united.
It will be a path through which we will walk side by side, taking advantage of the connections of our time, using progress as a defense fort. Gandhi used to say that “life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”. Each of us is now called to dance, for ourselves, for our art, in the conscious search for our future. From this point of view, the teachers can be the “dance teachers”.
We are working to deliver as many courses as possible on the “e-learning” platforms. But we are an Academy of Fine Arts: a school of making, a place that involves our mind and arms in equal measure. We will return as soon as possible to pursue this vision, but to make this wait shorter, the invitation is to comply with the rules of conduct that allow you to remove the possibility of contagion. Be young, but also responsible!
All RUFA offices will continue to work remotely. The RUFA offices in via Benaco 2 and via degli Ausoni 7 are open, for the sole purpose of carrying out monitoring and coordination activities. All the innovations introduced will be published on our Unirufa website.
I want to address the families of the many students that fill the Academy. It is the moment of responsibility: a virus has targeted our fears, limiting us in our most precious value, that of freedom. History teaches us that it is not a place that makes us free, but the power of our ideas. Nelson Mandela taught us that “the most difficult task in life is to change yourself”. Let’s take this journey together, hand in hand, changing our habits as necessary. Returning to normal is the new emotion that we will return to live.”
Arch. Fabio Mongelli
