— Furio Radin,
President of the Italian Union
Human groups need traditions that provide stability and security.
If that is true for nations, which have an arsenal of instruments to build and maintain shapes of culture that last over time, the small and vulnerable communities and their traditions become vital to their members’ sense of identity. This is the reason why each community of national minorities shows interest in its history, ethnography and folklore and, clearly, cultural and artistic events that involve their members and denote the vitality of the respective ethnic group.
As a source of pride for us, these premises – and more specifically, an artistic event such as Ex Tempore of Grožnjan – deserve a more in-depth discussion. We are looking at an event that started as a niche and subsequently became, in terms of the number of participants, the largest cultural event in Istria, and probably in Croatia and Slovenia. Paradoxically, this artistic event involving more than 500 artists made the interest in the organisation decrease while the interest in artistic quality increased, and with the numbers of artists participating, this is a given. On the other hand, we, the Italian Union, are proud that after it started 19 years ago, the quantity and quality has risen over time thanks to the passion and work invested in it, together with the Università Popolare di Trieste and the Municipality of Grožnjan. If the small things are important for the INC, the great things are proportionally even more so, as they produce beneficial effects for our identity and our image – and we are well aware that we truly need it.