WCL11: Florence Working-Class Literature Festival, part 2
Working Class History
Working Class History
5.0 • 813 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're joined again by working-class author and one of the main organisers of the festival, Alberto Prunetti, and former GKN worker, Dario Salvetti. We also talk to another two working-class writers who have participated in the festival: Claudia Durastanti, who helps organise the festivals, and Anthony Cartwright, who has attended the last two.
In this episode, we discuss what went on at the last two festivals and what made them different from conventional literary events: from the attendees and various events and presentations to the participation of GKN workers not just in logistics but in readings and performances. We also discuss the possibilities for the future of the festival - and for the GKN struggle itself.
Full show notes including further reading, photos, a documentary about the GKN struggle, and a full transcript are available on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/wcl10-11-florence-working-class-literature-festival/
Acknowledgements
- Many thanks also to Alberto Prunetti and Edizioni Alegre for giving us permission to reproduce photos from previous years' festivals
- Thanks to all our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltsman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano
- Our theme tune for these episodes is ‘Occupiamola’ (or ‘Let’s Occupy It’) as sung on a GKN workers’ demonstration in 2024. Many thanks to Reel News London for letting us use their recording. Watch the documentary it's taken from here
- This episode was edited by Tyler Hill
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to part two of our double episode on the Festival of Working Class Literature and the GKN Workers' Struggle in Florence. |
| 0:08.0 | If you haven't listened to part one yet, we both working class history |
| 0:37.7 | and working class literature, because of the support of our listeners on Patreon. If you like what |
| 0:43.1 | we do and want to help us of our work, join us on patreon.com slash working class history, where you can |
| 0:49.0 | get benefits like early access to episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted books, merch and more. For instance, |
| 0:56.2 | as well as getting early listening to both episodes about the Festival of Working Class |
| 0:59.8 | literature, patron supporters can listen to our two Patreon-only series, Radical Reads and Fireside |
| 1:06.1 | Chat. Link in the show notes. In our previous episode, we mentioned how from the 4th to the 6th of April this year, |
| 1:13.3 | the third annual festival of working class literature will take place in Florence. |
| 1:18.3 | We also spoke about the history of the GKN dispute, how to workers there took over their factory, |
| 1:23.7 | and finally how the first two festivals got organised despite repeated attempts at sabotage. |
| 1:29.7 | As you may remember, the first two installments suffered from legal threats, denunciations in the media |
| 1:34.7 | and even sabotage in the form of unidentified individuals breaking in and cutting off the factory's power. |
| 1:41.7 | But in the end, the festivals went ahead and were a huge success, |
| 1:45.1 | with about 3,500 people attending the first one in 2023, and about 5,000 attending the next |
| 1:51.4 | one in 2024. There, attendees encountered a series of talks, readings and performances, |
| 1:57.2 | not just around Italian literature, but about the broader practice of international |
| 2:01.9 | working class writing, as Alberto Prunetti, one of the organizers of the festival, explains. |
| 2:07.8 | You must invite the guests, people, writer, actors to talk, to read, coming not only from |
| 2:16.6 | Italy, because we wanted, we were thinking to an international |
| 2:19.9 | event, because working class is international. It was very strange, you know, because we were |
| 2:25.0 | fighting against a British corporation, and our main guests in the fifth edition were all British because we were in love with the |
... |
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