The first part of “We are Loano,” the social campaign launched by the City of Loano to chronicle the restart of the city's residents, merchants and business operators after the two-month lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has ended with the release of the last video selfie.
In early May, in conjunction with the government's launch of “Phase 2,” the city administration led by Mayor Luigi Pignocca had launched the “We are Loano” project, whose goal was to tell the story of “the restart of Loano also and especially from the point of view of those who live and work there.”.
Participants in “We are Loano” were invited to provide small and simple creative contributions, telling through a short video their own restart: from the merchant who can finally “raise the shutter” to the sportsman who resumes practicing his favorite sport. The most interesting videos were posted on the City of Loano's social pages and created a long and varied narrative, that of a city and a community that are starting to live again and are ready to welcome the tourists who will want to make it their vacation destination.
The project has been very well received: “On May 31, the last day for sending clips, there were more than thirty video-selfies that arrived at the email box specially created for the occasion,‘ explains Mayor Luigi Pignocca. ’Several videos (such as that of the Loanese Hoteliers Association or the hairdressers) were made ‘in groups,’ so the total number of participants was even higher. The videos, posted on our social channels, recorded thousands of views, shares, ”likes' and comments, a clear sign of how the campaign succeeded in achieving its purpose: to show our community's desire to start over.".
“The project of ‘We are Loano’ (which, I want to emphasize, was conceived and realized for free by photographer Alessandro Gimelli, Andrea Calcagno of Castigamatti Creative Farm and Luca Berto, all coordinated by tourism office official Marta Gargiulo) has achieved excellent results,” adds Tourism Councillor Remo Zaccaria. "The concept itself has not gone unnoticed and has also been taken up in other localities, which have chosen to tell their restart by showing the work of those people (beachgoers, merchants, hotel operators) who make our country alive.
Having published the video-selfies, the “official” video of the campaign made (again free of charge) by photographer Alessandro Gimelli is now available: “In the splendid clip made by Alessandro,” Pignocca and Zaccaria add, "appear not only many other Lovran merchants and operators, but also many people who, during the emergency, continued to work for the good of the entire community and to whom we all owe our most heartfelt thanks: they are the Red Cross volunteers, those of the Civil Defense, and the officers of our local police. Without their commitment and dedication, the management of this pandemic would have been much more complicated. Alexander's video is a small but fitting tribute to them.".
The clip can be seen on Alessandro Gimelli's Facebook page and on the City's social channels and will be the “official” clip of Loano's 2020 tourist season.
The final piece of the project is the “emotional” brochure, curated by Castigamatti Creative Farm and now being published, which will have an entirely new layout and graphics this year.
“On behalf of all our fellow administrators and fellow citizens, we would like to thank Gimelli, Calcagno and Berto for their great commitment to this project, entirely at the service of our community,” Pignocca and Zaccaria concluded.
