Quaderni della Fondazione Piaggio
In 1995 the Foundation began publishing a quarterly magazine, the Quaderni, featuring discussions and debates on the most significant themes of civil and economic life in contemporary society.
The magazine - created, co-ordinated and edited by the then chairman of the scientific committee Tommaso Fanfani - publishes the details of workshops, seminars and conferences and transcriptions of debates and round table discussions organised by the Foundation. Each issue contains a supplement of photographs of Foundation events, including art exhibitions and excerpts from the "Antonella Bechi Piaggio" historical archive's plentiful visual material.
The first issue of the Quaderni came out in July 1995 on the theme Internationalisation and economic development. It had an editorial by the Chairman and founder of the Foundation, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, and articles by distinguished names in culture, economics and civil society such as Francesco Barone, Piero Barucci, Marco Dezzi Bardeschi and Attilio Brilli. The first issue was an immediate success and was followed by others that have, over time, kept to the aim of making the magazine a vehicle for the promotion of culture and the ongoing debate on significant themes in social and economic life.
Organisations such as the Foundation, which give themselves lofty objectives in the social or cultural fields, often run the risk of losing their focus, either because they form part of a rapidly evolving world or because they aim in a large number of incompatible directions. The Quaderni have saved the Foundation from running any such risk. Debates, speeches and discussions transcribed on the pages of the magazine are more effective in the long run, and their informational content is reinforced. Despite the diversity of themes and the variety of fields discussed, the magazine has some constant centres of interest that reflect the guidelines of the Piaggio Foundation's cultural activity.
The most important of these is the relationship between the company and culture, and over the years the Piaggio Foundation and the Quaderni have become centres of reflection on company museums and archives, tourism and industrial archaeology and, in more general terms, the complex problems of promoting the arts. In the first few years the Quaderni attentively observed the political evolution that led to the Treaty of Maastricht and the introduction of a single currency, as well as the more technical aspects of European unification such as judicial collaboration and the European civil service project. Other themes addressed by the magazine include the problem of unemployment, the larger questions of globalisation and international competition, the cultural policies of museums, the ability of sport to offer a model of everyday life with respect for values and ethics in communication and biotechnology research.
The magazine will continue to be a forum for discussion on the major questions of civil life and offer a dynamic way to face them. It will maintain its educational role while defending the worthiest values of contemporary society.