La The Italian peasant factory of Bologna, Fico, changes setting. After the collapse of visits, past the novelty effect and with the entry into the second summer of the pandemic, the creature of Farinetti, Segrè and the Coop world, retires its didactic role to become a real theme park. With the new CEO Stephen Cigarini, patron of Cinecittà, Fico turns Italian food culture into a great amusement park with the ambition of becoming the Disneyland of food.
«At Fico we made a paradigm shift - explains Cigarini - both from the point of view of the food narrative and from that of the people who enter to visit the park. Before, the park was much more technical, but now it 'opens up' to the visitor in an intuitive way, through collective images and iconographies, such as the installation in the shape of a slice of cheese located in front of the Parmigiano Reggiano site. Before, the Parmigiano factory was narrated through incomprehensible ways of language, since the production chain, exposed in the mechanical parts, is completely mute to the ear of those who are not experts in the sector. Now instead the visitor arrives and is faced with a multimedia show which, explaining the production processes through video, uses a universal language that enables the general public to understand. At the end of the show, an operator comes out to accompany me on my visit to the site, but at this point I have acquired the reading tools I need to understand what I have in front of me. The key to the new Fico is exactly this: to make food culture without being didactic, without being teachers ».
Could this be the key or the stimulus from which to start to make tourists appreciate all the typical features of Italian gastronomy, beyond the symbolic dishes of the Bel Paese?
«The world has evolved and the products are increasingly sophisticated so that they can satisfy increasingly narrow niches of the public. I'll give a television example to be clearer: today's programs find it difficult to bring together a larger ensemble of 2-3 people in front of the screen. We started from this premise when we rethought Fico, the format had to speak at multiple levels to work. There had to be gods stimuli designed for the child, visual, tactile and olfactory, of experiences designed for the adult, who finds himself portioning the salami and a historical heritage designed for the elderly, who here again witnesses how ragù was once made. All this builds an overall experience but one that is community. The big challenge is to bring heterogeneous audiences and give everyone something designed exactly for that target. This is the only way to obtain a varied audience, as the range of stimuli is enlarged. Fico is the only large food theme park in the world at the moment and this uniqueness derives from the fact that Italy is among the world's leading countries in the agri-food sector, a credibility that has been built over centuries of history. This is why I am convinced that if a format like Fico has reason to exist in Italy, it has even more reason to exist abroad. Fico has a great opportunity: to become the first five senses park in the world. In Disneyland the palate or the sense of smell are not satisfied. On the other hand, when you enter the multimedia carousel of the earth and fire of Fico, you can smell the coal or the scent of freshly squeezed oil. This type of unconscious sensory experience is what will make Fico's target liquid ».
What are the policies that would serve to consolidate the image of Italian food?
«I have no advice but a reflection: we have 60-70% of the world's architectural and historical heritage, we are the country with the most Unesco sites, but at the same time we don't have 60-70% of world tourism. This derives from the fact that we have not been able to translate our assets into experience. Take for example the Colosseum, one of the Seven Wonders of the world, the average stay of tourists inside is 32 minutes, the same amount of average time I spend at the butcher's. We should encourage technology to enhance the story we make of ourselves. Italy has to take a shot, it has to go from "I am a beautiful country" to "I am a country that offers experiences to the public who visits it". This is what happens to Fico ».
