MississiPo

Life Away from the spotlight

On a camper turned into a mobile newsroom we drove up and down the river for 2.000 km, almost 3 times its length.
We travelled from Venice to Turin, a journey upstream along the Po River. It was like crossing a forgotten region, an almost exotic land in the heart of Italy’s north plain, the industrial and agricultural engine of the country.

The Po River flows across the most densely populated and richest area of Italy, but its banks are almost abandoned. A stretch of land that remains isolated and preserved: we called it the 21st Italian region, a repository of human stories, biodiversity and beauty – but also a reservoir of abuses and neglect.

This multimedia project was an excuse to explore life away from the spotlight and the glamour of big cities and to tell current stories about the father of all Italian rivers, its identity and its traditions. We travelled in a campervan that was turned into a newsroom, a field kitchen and a living room to welcome the people that we met along the river.

Check out the web-doc on Corriere.it (best seen on Chrome).

Along the Po River we've produced our first web-doc, an interactive multimedia project that invites users to explore the river through a mix of video, photos, audio and articles.

L'imperatore del Po

Valenza, Piemonte

Bio-mussels from the Delta

Sacca di Scardovari, Italy

We eat more and more fish, and most of it is farmed fish. Since 2012, worldwide we’re producing more tons of farmed fish than beef: according to a report by the Earth Policy Institute, an American environmental association, in that year there were 66 millions of fish against 63 millions of beef. Therefore attention must be paid to the environmental impact of fisheries as well. Among the less polluting aquacultures mussels are a good example. This is due to the ability of mussels to use CO2 to produce calcium carbonate, a fundamental element for the construction of the shell during the growth phase.

There is an ongoing debate among researchers: some claim that the balance of carbon dioxide captured compared to that emitted by mussel fisheries is even positive. Others, on the other hand, think that the amount of CO2 released into the environment from activities related to fish farming - sowing, harvesting, transporting and processing - is greater than that seized by molluscs, thus producing a negative balance. If the first opinion were to be true, mussel farms could even contribute to the fight against greenhouse gases. For this reason in Italy there are already those who are hypothesizing to price the natural carbon dioxide filtering activity of the mussels to obtain carbon credits to be traded on the market. At the moment this is still an hypothesis of study, waiting for the experts to solve the scientific debate.

What is certain is that if it was to be demonstrated that breeding mussels really serves to reduce greenhouse gases, it would be a unique opportunity for the development of this fish farming. And in the future we could expect to eat mussels as we do today with chicken thighs.

Il successo vien gridando

Bergantino, Veneto

SETTE

Italy

In July 2015, before launching the web-doc on the internet, the first of a series of 8 reports shot on the Po River made the cover story of SETTE, the weekly magazine of Corriere della Sera.

EXPO US PAVILION 2015

Milan, Lombardy

Fondazione Maimeri

Milan, Lombardy

Mole Antonelliana

Torino, Piedmont

In March 2016 we organized, with the support of SMAT, an event at the Mole Antonelliana in Turin to celebrate the evergrowing importance of water on the occasion of the 24th World Water Day.