In a city where haste, indifference and everyday acts of intimidation too often prevail, a group of artists, curators, students, cultural associations and local residents has chosen to respond with a simple yet radical gesture: kindness.
Diritto di Gentilezza (Right to Kindness) is a participatory art action born from the observation of daily life and the countless forms of discourtesy that shape it. From ignoring queues and pedestrian crossings to occupying cycle lanes or parking spaces reserved for disabled people, from verbal aggression to simple indifference, the project responds to the growing normalization of incivility in public space.
Against this backdrop, the organizers propose an hour dedicated to art, attention and human connection.
On Saturday 24 October, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., in Piazza Carlo Alberto Scotti in the Monteverde district of Rome, artists from different disciplines, students from the Alighieri Caravillani High School, and cultural associations will offer passers-by small acts of kindness: poems recited for strangers, pages from books shared on a park bench, haiku, drawings, photographs, miniature artworks, flowers, music, performances and brief relational actions designed to create opportunities for encounter and exchange.
The initiative invites participants to reflect on kindness not as a matter of good manners or personal virtue, but as a civic practice capable of improving public space and the quality of social relationships. Kindness, attentive listening, slowness and mutual care are here reclaimed as rights that can be exercised, shared and defended.
Throughout the event, visitors will be invited to place their own “wishes for kindness” inside a dedicated collection box. These short messages will be gathered and preserved as testimonies of a different city, one grounded in solidarity and mutual respect. The morning will also feature a public reading of the Diritto di Gentilezza Manifesto, a declaration affirming respect for others, responsibility towards the community and the right to inhabit the city without being subjected to everyday acts of abuse and intimidation.
Conceived and curated by Penelope Filacchione and Roberta Melasecca, and coordinated by Art Sharing Roma and Blow Art Contemporary Space, the project brings together many small actions in an effort to transform, through art and participation, the way urban space and social relationships are perceived.
Because a city is more than streets and infrastructure: it is a community. And because change, even when it begins with the smallest gesture, depends on all of us.
The project is supported by the following associations: Monteverde Attiva, The Ways to The Indies, TrequArti.
Participating gallery and cultural space: Spaziofelice.