FIT Festival Internazionale del Teatro e della scena contemporanea – Lugano: FIT for the Future

FIT for the Future is a transformation and curatorial support project lasting three years, designed to become a model of reference in the artistic field. Born within the particular context of Canton Ticino, a region characterised by extremely limited resources, this process aims to respond to a deep need for renewal, not only in form but also in method. Specifically, FIT for the Future addresses the following questions: how can we ensure that a network strongly tied to a single person – composed of partners, supporters, and audiences – can be passed on to their successor? How can knowledge transfer be guaranteed in anticipation of a change in leadership, particularly when moving from an individual leadership to a co-leadership and then back to an individual leadership? In a region where institutional support for independent culture is often undersized and where professions related to independent culture are often not conceived as a legitimate career, FIT for the Future wants to reaffirm that a festival is not a privilege but a service to the community, a cultural and economic driver for the region. 

The project does not focus on the simple replacement of one leadership figure with another, but rather questions how this transition takes place: the process, the care, and the real possibility of building together a healthy working context, free from toxic dynamics, competition, and pressures. The change in leadership is therefore understood as an internal, relational, progressive movement: a time of mutual learning, shared construction, and co-curation. 

The goal is to test a sustainable transition model, without predetermining the timing or final outcome. The artistic direction of Paola Tripoli, together with artist and director Simon Waldvogel – who has already collaborated over the years with FIT – and the festival team, will engage in a gradual handover, where the outgoing figure gradually accompanies the incoming one, fostering an organic and seamless change. 

In recent years, the FIT has always placed at the center of its vision the idea that theatre only makes sense if it is experienced as a process that creates community. It is its humanism that makes it radically different from other fields. FIT for the Future moves in the same direction: like any authentic process, it carries with it the risk of error but also the promise of discovery. It is an exercise in experimentation, open, fluid, and aware of its contradictions, aiming to offer the world of performing arts – and beyond – an inspiring model capable of «regenerating without cutting.»