Milan: ExpoinCittà

1. Context

Milan Metropolitan Area (Greater Milan) is located in North-Western Italy within Lombardy region. It has a population of roughly 5 million inhabitants and is one of the most industrialized areas in Italy. In the meantime, it’s also the geographical area with the biggest cultural activities (museums, contemporary art galleries, design, fashion and publishing industry).

ExpoinCittà aims to gather all the cultural, sport and recreational events taking place in Greater Milan during the six months of Expo (May - October 2015) and promote them through a coordinated communication plan, both online and offline.

The main idea behind the project was to encourage Expo visitors to come and visit Milan before or after visiting the Expo site. A single platform was set up to:

• (a) encourage event organizers to upload their events and be part of the project;
• (b) make it easy for tourists to find out what to do in town. Therefore, the first part of the project was aimed at actually building the calendar, trying to attract as many events as possible. The second part was aimed at communicating those events to tourists and citizens. ExpoinCittà is therefore beneficial to both event organizers and city users. The former can now present all documentations needed to organize an event (e.g. occupation of public land, trade licenses) to a single office (it has been created a specific staff) and the latter can find all that happens in town on a single website.

The main idea behind the project was to encourage Expo visitors to come and visit Milan before or after visitin the Expo site.

2. Milan's project

ExpoinCittà communicates events through a mix of online and offline methods. All materials are bilingual Italian/English.

Services for tourists/citizens:

• expoincitta.com hosts the calendar where events are divided up in 10 categories and which can be browsed by date and category.
• ExpoinCittà prints a free weekly newspaper with all the events of the week. It is distributed locally in 350k copies.
• “A place to BLOG” is a multicultural blog in seven languages. Young native speakers living in Milan contribute to ExpoinCittà storytelling, review events and give advice about must-go events and must-see landmarks.
• ExpoinCittà actively manages profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Events are communicated on a daily basis.
• ExpoinCittà app (available for Android and iOS) enables users to browse events, find them on a map thanks to geolocalisation, learn interesting information about Milan and public transport, participate in a monthly photo contest.
• ExpoinCittà participates in E015 (www.e015.expo2015.org/). It is a digital ecosystem and anyone can download ExpoinCittà calendar as open and free data, to use for different purposes (e.g. build a third-party app/software or web content).

The project has involved three thousand operators, making a total of more than 40.000 events. In addition it has been noticed an interesting openness and courteousness at the help desk and a strong collaboration between the operators from different institutions.

Services for event organizers:

• Coordinated and free communications through the abovementioned channels.
• A single office to complete all procedures needed.
• A sponsorship office to find a sponsor for their event(s).
• A venue catalogue to find the right location to organise events.

Milan Chamber of Commerce and the Municipality of Milan jointly manage the project. Moreover, ExpoinCittà has four main partners (Vodafone Italia, Edison, Intesa San Paolo and Easy Jet).They gave an economic contribution which has been used to pay the communication. Furthermore it was made an agreement with the SIAE (italian society of authors and editors) in order to support the copyright processes and promote the production of young creativity.

3. Aim of the project

ExpoinCittà aims to gather all the cultural, sport and recreational events taking place in Greater Milan during the six months of Expo (May - October 2015) and promote them through a coordinated communication plan, both online and offline.

4. Milan and culture, which effects, which results?

The project has involved three thousand operators, making a total of more than 40.000 events. In addition it has been noticed an interesting openness and courteousness at the help desk and a strong collaboration between the operators from different institutions.

We would give more emphasis to the non-central areas of the city in order to accommodate projects and become the attractive focus of other event’s activities, otherwise there would be the risk to give too much attention to the city centre.

5. Other information

Website: www.expoincitta.com

Facebook: Expo in Città;

Twitter: @Expoincitta

Instagram: @Expoincitta

Youtube: ExpoinCittà

This article was written by Filippo Del Corno, Councillor for culture, City of Milan

Contact: Segreteria.AssessoreDelCorno (at) comune.milano.it