Riccardo Venturi. States of childhood - Journey to the growing country

The exhibition at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere presents over 80 photographs, the result of the reportage of the important mission of the social enterprise "With Children" and has as its theme that of inequality and marginalization, social exclusion and early school leaving. The purpose of the exhibition is to highlight the complexity of the problem, but also to highlight all possible solutions through experiments and "educational alliances" between schools, the third sector, institutions and families. In fact, in recent years, there has been a significant increase in phenomena related to eating disorders, drug addiction, social isolation with the phenomenon of hikikomori (lit. "to stand aside" Japanese term to indicate those who decide to withdraw from social life ) and neets (an acronym for Not in Education, Employment or Training to indicate adolescents who interface with the world only through their computer screen), xenophobia, the degradation of the suburbs, domestic violence, which have made it possible to understand how much marginality has become a stratified social phenomenon. The project, supported thanks to the "Fund for the contrast of juvenile educational poverty", has invested dozens of "Italian educational sites", from the Imagna and Brembana Valleys to Favara and Ragusa up to the outskirts of large cities in order to intervene in a situation that has sometimes become an emergency due to the pandemic and the lockdown. The work of Riccardo Venturi, twice World Press Photo and a long experience on the subject of childhood, and of Arianna Massimi underlines the importance of these often underestimated themes. The exhibition is completed by a documentary telling us about the experiences and impressions of the protagonists.

Photo credits: courtesy of Museum of Roma in Trastevere ofiicial site