The northwestern Italian city of Turin is set to have an Immigration Museum. On November 17, the local city council approved a motion to set up the museum. The motion was drafted by the center-left Democratic Party (PD).
Turin is set to have an Immigration Museum after a motion drafted by Democratic Party (PD) Councillor Caterina Greco was approved by the city council on November 17 with 26 votes in favor and one abstention.
"16.63 percent of Turin's residents are of foreign origin -- 143,279 people," Councillor Greco told the city council, when proposing the motion for the museum.
It is hoped the museum will "represent a meeting point for different cultures, involving the various foreign communities present, and it can additionally become part of the dossier" to promote the city's candidature as the 2033 European Capital of Culture, she added.
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Establishing the roots of immigration in Turin
Now the motion has passed, the mayor and the council's local executive have committed to set up an Immigration Museum as a physical location to "establish the roots of the history of immigration in Turin," creating as a first step a research committee on the theme.
It will include, in addition to the culture councillor's office, the Historic Archive of the City of Turin, the local Intercultural Center, and the network Rete Porta delle Culture (Doors of Culture network).
Other cultural associations active in the city could potentially join it to help carry out the project.
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35,000 existing documents could become part of museum collection
The president of the city's culture committee Lorenza Patriarca, who presented an amendment to the proposal, said 35,000 archival documents could constitute the "first unit of the new Museum".
"Turin has always been very welcoming and we must not forget how migration contributed to the city's development, thus also favoring cohesion," she declared.
Green-Left Councillors Sara Diena and Emanuele Busconi said it will "be important to give a voice to those who have firsthand experience of the migration phenomenon and to remember that colonialism is part of western history. This act calls for a change in the dominant storyline regarding the phenomenon of migration and refuses to view it solely from an 'emergency' perspective.
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