Over 8,000 visitors in just two months with a 95% satisfaction rate: gres art 671 presents its first Impact Report
Roberto Pesenti “Companies are being called upon to rethink their sustainability model, promoting new projects that leverage culture as a driver of development”
Over 8,000 people visited gres art 671 in the first two months since it opened, attracted by the initiatives, exhibitions and events organised in the new art and culture centre, created in Bergamo on the initiative of Italmobiliare, as told by its first Impact Report. Inaugurated in November 2023, gres art 671 was created with the intention of reactivating and returning a former industrial area to the citizens to preserve and transmit the memory of its manufacturing history by creating a space that produces culture. A new, open and welcoming space, which fits into the urban fabric, integrating without ever overlapping with the city's artistic offering, "helping to project the city of Bergamo into a new and much larger international dimension", to quote the words of the mayor, Giorgio Gori.
“gres art 671 has chosen to adopt the legal form of a benefit company and to operate through art and culture, recognising its social value", explains Roberto Pesenti, Chairman of gres art 671. "This type of business allows us to act responsibly and transparently towards people, communities and the territory through cultural and social activities aimed at improving the quality of entities and associations, and other territorial stakeholders, through a business model capable of combining economic balance with the commitment to generate a positive impact on the society in which we operate. An impact that we already wanted to measure, even if just a few months after opening."
And it is precisely from this perspective that the company has prepared its first impact report, from which it emerges that in the first two months of activity 8,009 people visited gres art 671 to take part in one of the numerous initiatives organised between November and December. The most popular event was the SOLARPUNK exhibition by the NONE collective, which inaugurated the space and was very well received by both the public and the critics. There was also an excellent response to the Festival delle Buone Notizie (Good News Festival), which involved a large audience of under 35s, to Incontri Inaspettati (Unexpected Encounters), a concert organised together with the Brescia Bergamo International Piano Festival and Bergamo Jazz, and to the Red Party, a fundraising event organised by the Fondazione Aiuti per la Ricerca sulle Malattie Rare (Aid Foundation for Research into Rare Diseases). On the other hand, the success of children's workshops, school visits, visits for disabled people and drinks with the neighbourhood has not been measured quantitatively, but qualitatively. Events, which bring people together, stimulate them and involve them in a dialogue that becomes a driving force for the development of relationships, ideas and projects, which can have multiple purposes, but with the main aim of making people share by connecting them to the territory. All these initiatives fall within one of the five common benefit purposes identified in the by-laws of the Gres Art Società Benefit and reported in the company's 2023 Impact Report.
THE GENERATED VALUE
To evaluate the impact generated by gres art 671, we chose to use the B Impact Assessment, a software developed by the independent US body B Lab which meets the legal requirements for the development of an "external evaluation standard" to quantify the impact of Benefit Corporations. What emerges is a virtuous company, albeit at the beginning of its journey of generating impact, with an overall score higher than the sector average and immediately very attentive to responsible and listening governance (a satisfaction questionnaire was distributed to the public, the main results of which are reported below). “Although referring to only two months of operations, the results of the Impact Report give us important feedback regarding the ability of gres art to involve the public and create added value for the community and the territory, as well as valuable indications on possible areas of development, comments Roberto Pesenti. Aware that the journey has just begun, let's start again from these ideas to plan future initiatives and offer an even better contribution to the purposes of common benefit that our by-laws commit us to pursue”.
PUBLIC APPROVAL
In addition to measuring itself through an external evaluation standard, the company decided to listen to its public through a satisfaction questionnaire that involved a sample of 125 people and from which interesting results emerged. 44% of the visitors to gres art 671 came from outside the city, demonstrating the attractiveness of the project just two months after its inauguration. 29% of those interviewed learned about gres art from social networks and 23% from newspapers, but the most relevant data is that 37% learned about gres art through word of mouth or from neighbours, a sign that the objective to stimulate dialogue and involve people has already been partially achieved. The qualitative findings are also extremely positive: 94.7% of those interviewed defined the experience as very positive or positive, the space and the exhibition were the elements most appreciated by the public, who in 77.3% of cases declared that they would certainly return to gres art 671. Having collected and analysed these numbers, it is now time to plan the future. 2023 was the year that the project was launched, dedicated mainly to the space, the urban transformation and the planning of future activities of gres art 671. But in a project like this the inauguration of the space is only the beginning of the journey. The objective of gres art 671 now is for individuals and groups to recognise it as a new cultural subject, to use it and above all to see it as a generative element of other common processes, tangible or intangible, in which they themselves feel that they have an active role. The daily operations of gres art 671 are temporarily interrupted for the completion of building works, which include the construction of a restaurant and a co-working space, but even in this period the structure continues to host events and will reopen permanently after the summer with many new features.
“We are focusing attention above all on the transformation process that can convert gres art 671 into a resource for everyone, capable of satisfying the needs of the communities with which it relates, explains Francesca Acquati, General Manager of gres art 671. With this logic, gres art 671 will develop through two strategic assets: permanent functions, i.e. free access areas, bar/restaurant, spaces equipped for studying or working, and cultural productions such as exhibitions, meetings and live shows. The objective is to promote initiatives and projects that leverage culture as a driver of development for the territory and its people”.
