Filippo Lemmola is the founder of Offside Film Festival Italia, part of an international movement using football to bring people of different cultures together. Filippo talks about his organisation’s involvement in this year’s Football People weeks.

“This year, from the 9 October, we will be running a photographic exhibition along the theme of ‘No Borders No Limits’, demonstrating how football is a universal language that can communicate to different cultures. It will consist of 10 new works displayed across the city of Milan, each with a photo and an unpublished story by 10 different sports authors that people can read online by scanning a QR code with their phones.

Along with Fare, the project is also supported by local institutions such as the Municipality of Milan, but also by Ricetta QUBì (one of the most important philanthropy projects in Italy).

A touring exhibition was produced in Milan many years ago to tell the story of the inhabitants of the neighbourhoods. From there, we started to use the idea in a more modern way and tell the story of football as a social phenomenon. The idea is to bring art into the city, outside of the museums, and not the citizens inside the museums.

A lot of research and preparation work has gone into the exhibition and it took a long time to choose the best works, plan the best ways to spread these throughout the city, and to get a detailed communication campaign in place.

But we are excited and ready to go. Despite the difficulties linked to Covid-19, we absolutely want to take the field again this year to make our contribution to the defence of human rights.

This promotion would also involve highlighting the main social objective of the exhibition, which is to start a fundraising campaign together with QUBì to bring immigrant children with no economic possibilities a chance to play football in a real team for the new season.

We also did this campaign last year and all the children involved then have already signed up to a team. This is the biggest medium-and-long-term success we can experience.

That is why being part of the #FootballPeople weeks is so important for us. It is reassuring to know that there is a two-week period in the year where we can spread messages of integration and hope. In such a difficult moment in history, unity is our strength. Without the #FootballPeople weeks, we would just be just a small group of people with no voice.”