Glocal Factory’s team presents the Alternative Glossary of Covid19.

A word per week, for a series of 10 words, of our daily vocabulary about the crisis of Covid19 will be explored by one of our members through a short article. It is available as a text in English and Italian in Glocal Factory’s website and as a video story on our Facebook page. In this way, we would like to provide an alternative way to read the present and innovative perspective to deal with future challenges.

Alessandro Carbone introduces the series.

First of all, a double premise is necessary. There is no doubt that, in Coronavirus time, we all find ourselves with a little more time in our hands. For many, “teleworking” has spared them tiring trips to and from work, while the domestic routine, to which many have had to get used to, certainly has transferred energies towards the management of household chores and the creative care of children. Indeed, we have more time for these daily tasks, which means also a challenge to use it wisely: to rest, to reflect, to plan our future (certainly uncertain), to develop thoughts and ideas to which we would like to dedicate some energy.

In this logic, we at Glocal Factory have activated “a time for reflection and discussion” together, which is expressed, inevitably, in a digital meeting space where we bring together our meditations and elaborate them dialogically. A sort of “think tank” branded Covid19, a basin to develop thoughts about the current situation and prophecies about the future. This article, or rather this series of mini articles, reveals the desire to share our reflections, to extend them to our fellow adventurers in Italy and all over Europe, so that, together, we can make this crisis an opportunity for progress. This article is written, therefore, by several hands and at different times, in a sort of itinerant “vademecum” in the current course of time.

The second premise concerns the title. Media (whether social, printed, or traditional ones) have forged, in these weeks of pandemic, a list of words that, unfortunately, have become very familiar. Words that refer to the technical and scientific characteristics of the virus, terms that describe the structural and procedural aspects of the interventions. We would like to propose an alternative glossary, less contingent to the situation, but equally pertinent to describe the phenomena that arose with the outbreak of the Covid19 crisis. And we would like to do so by taking a dual perspective. Winston Churchill, who had to deal with many emergencies during his political mandates, stated as follows: ” The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”. Drawing upon this thought, therefore, we want to turn our attention to the horizon of meaning expressed by the question “what has this crisis taught us?”. At the same time, we want to look to the future according to the adage “how – we believe – should things be different after the Corona virus emergency?”. With this double vision in mind we want to select our words.