TURIN, Italy – In a changing scenario in which barriers and distancing between individuals, communities and nations become necessary, Lavazza is trying to build bridges between people, drawing them closer through the universal language of art, the one capable of speaking to the heart of us all. Its aim is to show human beings’ extraordinary resilience and generate feelings of hope that will make it possible to build a “New Humanity”.
A wake-up call to individual sensibility in the hope that from this long and difficult period we may see the rebirth of a society that values solidarity, inclusion, tolerance and sustainable development, values that also guide Lavazza Group’s business.
Such is the background to The New Humanity 2021, a Lavazza art project conceived and developed under the creative direction of ad agency Armando Testa. It puts the individual at the centre by offering a collection of original artistic contributions from outstanding exponents in the world of photography, but also music, poetry, design, architecture and social activism.
The New Humanity 2021, conceived and nurtured during the lockdown months during last spring, features a calendar and a magazine, for the first time available to the public worldwide in a limited edition under a fund-raising project in support of Save the Children, the NGO that since over 100 years, fights to save children at risk and guarantee them a future, of which Lavazza is the longest standing partner.
On auction.lavazza.com , in collaboration with the platform CharityStars, from November 12 to November 26, 2020, one thousand 2021 Lavazza calendars will be offered for sale and 12 original photos and a special object put up for auction, with the proceeds going to support New Horizons, a project for the most vulnerable young people in India (in the Calcutta area). Lavazza has been supporting this project for the last three years through A Cup of Learning, an international programme (in nine countries) run by Fondazione Giuseppe and Pericle Lavazza that provides training for socially underprivileged young people seeking employment.
In The New Humanity 2021 calendar by Lavazza, 13 masters of photography present a new vision of humanity that reflects their personal viewpoints and styles. They are David LaChapelle, Simone Bramante, Martin Schoeller, Ami Vitale, Christy Lee Rogers, Steve McCurry, Joey L., Carolyn Drake, Denis Rouvre, Eugenio Recuenco, Charlie Davoli, Martha Cooper and TOILETPAPER.
The New Humanity 2021 magazine also has six cultural “ambassadors” called on to explore and amplify the multiple meanings of New Humanity and stimulate even deeper reflection on the process of restarting and reopening, starting from their own personal experience and sensibility. They are architect Carlo Ratti, designer Stella Jean, writer Alessandro Baricco, actress Kiera Chaplin, singer-songwriter Patti Smith, and Save the Children International CEO Inger Ashing. They work in worlds parallel to photography that enrich our interpretations of the concept of New Humanity using different languages and forms of expression: a design, a written thought, a piece of music, an architectural project…
“For Lavazza The New Humanity 2021 represents not only a new narrative direction, but also an artistic vanguard, for which we wanted around us the people from the Lavazza universe and beyond,” says Lavazza Group Board Member Francesca Lavazza. “Indeed, we created a choral work of images and thoughts, produced by an invisible network of talents who are all very different one from another but united in the use of their sensibilities and skills as ambassadors who can make us think about the universal values that are the real essence of Human Beings.”
The thirteen photographers and six “ambassadors” are the artists and intellectuals engaged by Lavazza in an avant-garde cultural movement whose collective force is inspired by the concept of The New Humanity: each of us may identify with one or more of these works, remembering how we are all interconnected and how we must now try to stay united in order to be reborn.
“To imagine a new humanity we needed multiple testimonies, and as diverse as possible.That’s why we assembled the looks, voices and thoughts of photographers, writers, actors and musicians in the Calendar. A group “fresco” that enabled us to understand how deep this concept could go,” says Armando Testa Executive creative director Michele Mariani.
On November 12 at 6pm, on calendar.lavazza.com, the 2021 Lavazza Calendar will be revealed to the public through the words of its protagonists, in an event dedicated to The New Humanity and its key values.
Actor Pierfrancesco Favino will be the narrator this journey, accompanied by the music of Brunori Sas, one of the most representative singer-songwriters on the Italian music scene.
The speakers appearing on stage will be Patti Smith, Kiera Chaplin, Alessandro Baricco, Francesca Lavazza, Michele Mariani, Stella Jean, Carlo Ratti, Inger Ashing and the 13 world famous photographers involved in the project.
Lavazza 2021 Calendar: The New Humanity
The concept was sparked by the lockdown in spring 2020, when Lavazza decided to take a position and use its communication resources to speak out in favour of the universal values that are indispensable for the rebirth of humanity in a global scenario of serious adversity. In the meantime, The New Humanity has been inspiring and shaping Lavazza’s communication projects into a coherent, integrated and internationally reaching whole, a narrative that has transformed the 2021 Calendar into a multi-discipline art project bringing together artists from different backgrounds.
May 2020 saw the launch of the international TV campaign “Good Morning Humanity”, in which the Company uses the words pronounced by Charlie Chaplin at the end of his “Great Dictator” to salute a rediscovered humanity and make a powerful call for the reawakening of individual sensibility.
And in Turin in October, The New Humanity featured in Beyond Walls, a project by the French-Swiss artist Saype, which Lavazza supported in collaboration with the Municipality of Turin and Musei Reali Torino: two hands grip one another, inviting us to make a collective effort to feel part of a single ecosystem in the “biggest human chain in history”, which in Turin marked the 7th stage of a journey that’s already taken in the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Berlin Wall, among other places.
