The Venice Glass Week presents its fourth edition

The Venice Glass Week

The international Festival dedicated to the art of glass presents its fourth edition: #TheHeartOfGlass, which will take place around Venice, Murano and Mestre from 5th to 13th September 2020

This year’s #event will place a special focus on the "making" of glass, with the aim of helping to support and relaunch the Murano glass industry. Alongside events including exhibitions, demonstrations and guided tours, the Festival will offer a programme of online initiatives, in order to sustain links with international audiences.

VENICE, 13th July 2020 – The fourth edition of #theveniceglassweek will take place around Venice, Murano and Mestre from 5th to 13th September 2020. The international Festival was established in 2017 to celebrate, support and promote the art of glassmaking: the artistic and economic activity for which Venice has been known around the world for more than a thousand years. For the first time the Festival has a "title-hashtag": #TheHeartOfGlass, placing a special focus on the production of glass, and aiming to help relaunch and revitalise the sector - primarily that of Murano - which has faced extreme difficulties as a result of months of closure due to Covid- 19. Alongside the programme of events organised by the participants (which will be announced at the end of August), #theveniceglassweek 2020 offers for the first time, thanks to collaboration with its partners, an original programme of digital appointments produced by the Festival - such as the TVGW Tours LIVE! series of glassmaking demonstrations in furnaces streamed live on Instagram, and Conversations on Glass by Apice, a programme of conversations with international figures from the world of glass streamed live on YouTube. In addition, the Festival will offer a range of special initiatives designed for visitors who will come to Venice in September - #theveniceglassweek Tours by Nexa and the Kids' Programme by Artsystem.

Officially designated as one of this year’s Major Events of the Veneto Region, the new edition of #theveniceglassweek will build on the success achieved in 2019 when 103,000 visitors participated in over 200 events dedicated to artistic glass, staged in more than 100 different locations around Venice, Murano and Mestre. However, the fourth edition of the Festival is set to be significantly different from previous years: not in regard to the quantity or quality of its cultural offering - which aims to involve as large an audience as possible whilst fully respecting the necessary safety and social distancing precautions – but in terms of the spirit of #event. The reason for this is naturally due to the pandemic that has swept the world since the end of February. Covid-19 has had a grave effect on Venice in particular, seriously impacting upon the tourism and cultural sectors and forcing all production activities - primarily the Murano glass industry - to halt abruptly and remain closed for months, compounding a situation that was already challenged by global competition.

"The fourth edition of #theveniceglassweek will be more sober and more focused on Murano's artistic production, thanks also to a number of new initiatives that the Festival is producing directly for the public, which will include audiences from Venice, the Veneto, elsewhere in Italy and beyond." – stated the Organising Committee, made up of the Comune di #venezia, Fondazione Musei Civici di #venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini-LE STANZE DEL VETRO, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, and the most important association in the glass sector, the Consorzio Promovetro Murano, guardian of the Veneto Region’s Vetro Artistico® Murano brand - “In this difficult moment, the role and mission of #theveniceglassweek seems more vital than ever: to offer a platform of visibility for artistic glass, and at the same time to give a message of solidarity and support to the island of Murano and the city of Venice as a whole. By "resisting" and standing firm against the tide that has unfortunately seen the necessary cancellation or postponement of many other international cultural events, the Festival is confirming the strength of its roots in, and support for, Murano and Venice."

This standpoint is also supported and shared by the Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro who, together with the City's Municipal Administration, is striving to create a network of companies, associations, resident citizens and visitors, in order to support the art and production of Murano glass, and to strengthen creative synergies between venues and events connected with glass. With this aim in mind, since the second edition of the Festival, initiatives have also been organised on the Venetian mainland, ensuring that the mainland is fully integrated into the Festival events calendar.

#TheHeartofGlass therefore aims to (re)ignite among the people of Murano, Venice, mainland Venice, the Veneto and Italy the love for, and pride in, the ancient art of glass, without forgetting of course the international scope and ambitions of the Festival, which in previous editions has also been widely appreciated by audiences from abroad. In order to continue communicating with an international public, who – due to circumstances caused by Covid-19 - may find it more difficult to travel to Venice this September, the fourth edition of #theveniceglassweek has been given an intuitive English-language title. In addition, the Festival’s events programme has been designed to include a series of digital initiatives that should allow audiences abroad to "participate", in line with the inclusive spirit that has always distinguished the Festival.

The 2020 Festival is promoting a return to the roots, to the heart, of glassmaking - also evidenced through its title, written in the form of a hashtag #TheHeartofGlass. This hashtag-title indicates the development of digital initiatives within the Festival’s programme, alongside traditional events around the city. The title also refers to the fact that this year the Festival will place a special focus on the art and craft of "making" glass: an activity which is deeply embedded in Venice’s DNA, and which, thanks to the knowledge and skills that have been handed down and evolved over the centuries, ensures that Murano glass continues to be one of Italy’s most famous exports, admired and celebrated around the world.

The visual communication campaign of the fourth edition of #theveniceglassweek also focuses on the hands of glass masters: alchemists who transform molten glass into luminous, perfect forms. The graphic designer Cristina Morandin has adapted a selection of photographic images taken in the furnaces and workshops of Murano during previous editions of the Festival for the 2020 posters (displayed around Venice and Mestre since 15th June). These posters focus attention on the act of creation and aim to (re)kindle the public’s curiosity in the magic of glassmaking – an art and craft that has the capacity to exert a timeless fascination on people of all ages and backgrounds.

Information about all of the initiatives and events will be available soon on the website www.theveniceglassweek.com, created by the Festival’s technical sponsor D'Uva di Firenze, and on the social media profiles of the #event (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube).

For further information:

info@theveniceglassweek.com www.theveniceglassweek.com