Food is often narrated as an emergency, a basic need, an ethical or humanitarian issue. It is rarely conceived for what it truly is: a social and political infrastructure capable of sustaining—or undermining—people’s dignity and the quality of democracies. It is also from this awareness that Good Food for All was born: a European Citizens’ Initiative promoted by communities of practice and civil society organizations, and supported by Cittadellarte, calling on the European Union to recognize food as a fundamental human right through binding legislative instruments.

Good Food for All is the result of a multi-year process of civic participation and transnational cooperation, developed from the Opera Demopratica Ginevra that led to the “transformation” of cultural visions into concrete institutional proposals. This is not merely a symbolic campaign: it is a pathway aimed at making the right to food justiciable, and therefore truly enforceable, across different European contexts.

In this interview, Paolo Naldini—Director of Cittadellarte and originator of the demopractic method—retraces the origins of the initiative and reflects on the value of long-term political construction, on the role of art when it enters institutional space, and on the capacity of participatory processes to transform conflict into collective invention. From the simple act of signing to the vision of a planetary consultation to end all wars, the dialogue with Naldini broadens the horizon of Good Food for All, an example of demopraxy that does not merely represent, but is actively practiced.

Paolo, let’s start from the origins of the project: Good Food for All was launched as a European Citizens’ Initiative, but its roots lie in a long cultural and demopractic process. When and how did you realize that the right to food could—and should—become a concrete European political objective?
As Cittadellarte, we found ourselves in Rome on October 28–29, 2023, for the celebration of the Visible event on Climavore by Cooking Sections, a social transformation art project dedicated to food and agroecological supply chains that enable human and non-human communities to develop a sustainable relationship with the planet. On the same days, FAO was holding an important conference on food and the right to food, in which Rebirth Ambassador Walter El Nagar was participating. Naturally, as good friends, we exchanged information and attended both contexts together.
When Walter took part in the day at the Campidoglio, I was reminded of a European Citizens’ Initiative I had encountered for the first time in Brussels, when I visited an exhibition curated by our curator and collaborator Silvia Franceschini at CIVA, the Centre for Information, Documentation and Exhibitions on the City, Architecture, Landscape and Urban Planning in the Brussels Region. There, an Initiative dedicated to housing as a right was presented, and that is how I became aware of this possibility.
When Walter and I were reflecting on the future of the demopractic initiative on the right to food—after having contributed to changing the Constitution of the Canton of Geneva—the European Constitution remained. So I proposed the Initiative to him. In combination with the Visible event, there was also a former regional councillor from Tuscany present, who had personally experienced a European Citizens’ Initiative. He provided us with extensive information that very same day. It immediately seemed to us the most appropriate path, because in some way it echoed the work done in Geneva, albeit by reversing the order of the addends: normally in Switzerland, legislative initiatives are proposed to citizens through referenda; here, instead, the initiative came from citizens and was proposed to public administrators. It was therefore a convergence of several forces.

In a present characterized by instant slogans, Good Food for All is the result of a multi-year, “slow-cooked” process. In an era of acceleration and immediate responses, what value does the “long time” of political construction hold today?
There is a process of circularity linking practices and policies. Practices are the activities carried out by civil society organizations, which on the one hand are informed and driven by institutional policies, but on the other hand constitute and produce new realities, new forms of existence, new projects and activities that in turn inspire policies. Thus, a circularity is activated within the social pyramid, as opposed to the static model that divides the represented from the representatives through a delegation that occurs once every three, four, or five years; in that model, the apex weighs on the base, preventing the circulation of ideas.
In the dimension of demopraxy, good practices are brought to light and systematized, so much so that policies can adopt them as new guidelines. In this circularity, from the apex of the pyramid, policies that descend through legislation, norms, and regulations must align themselves with these practices. At the same time, practices themselves, by opening new contexts and territories, produce realities not yet regulated, thereby informing policies in return.
Thus, in a functioning democratic system, mechanisms are triggered that generate a spiral of demopraxy. I conceived the word “Spiral” as an acronym in English: S.P.I.R.A.L.—sustainable, participative, inclusive, regenerative, artivating, and living.

Speaking of food as a human right is often perceived as an ethical statement. With this initiative, however, binding legislative instruments are being demanded. What concretely changes when a right is inscribed into European policies?
In general, the recognition of a right within a legal system entails what jurists call justiciability—that is, the fact that violations of that right can be punished. This is an extremely practical principle, because it implies verification by competent authorities of judgment, inquiry, investigation, and law enforcement within our reality.
European legislation is hierarchically superior to national legislation, but very often it must be transposed by EU Member States, and in this transposition it is transformed or translated in coherence with national legal systems. We therefore expect that a principle enshrined in the European Constitution would be adopted and implemented by national legislations, albeit with a margin of adaptation that takes into account the diversity of legal frameworks.
The justiciability of the right to food, established through a constitutional regulation or another European-level instrument, would thus trigger a process of adoption by European states, ultimately producing national—and therefore local—justiciability of alleged violations of the right itself. Consequently, a person or group lacking access to food through their own means would no longer be merely a human tragedy to be contemplated, but a crime, for which responsibility would have to be recognized by those judging it. It is therefore evident that, should this be achieved, local and national administrative systems would have to put in place everything necessary to prevent such a crime from occurring. How? We do not yet know, and rightly so, because it must be determined through the legislative process and the international and national debate. It could involve public measures such as universal access to food, welfare services funded through taxation or other systems, or other approaches that we have not yet fully articulated.

The public launch in Brussels on January 14 culminated in a collective performance in front of the European Parliament. What role does the artistic gesture play today when it enters directly into political and institutional space?
Performance brings the body into space. The term derives from performa: form is precisely the figure of the entire person, while the person is the expansion of sound. In theatre, for example, the mask amplifies the actor’s voice through its form, rendering them both person and character. When one leaves the theatre, the character enters the living space of society with full physicality, not the divided space of the stage. Here, the dimension of the person becomes a form.
When we bring our bodies into public space, we perform our personhood; we move out of the personal dimension and into the public one. The flash mob we staged in front of Parliament was a performance—with the canonical mechanisms of demonstration, banners, and the occupation of a symbolic space—that enacted a provocation. It evoked something, but it also provoked discourse and debate.
The voice was represented by the expression Good Food For All, as if it were a slogan or a chant reverberating through the square. It evoked the chorus of a people, a demos, that still today presents itself before its administrators. Provocation is precisely what we aim to produce: a response to an evocation, awaiting the moment when it reaches the dimension of one million voices across Europe, in at least seven countries. Thus, performance makes resonate—through the physical bodies of citizens in the physical space of society—the voice and therefore the will of the people.

Every political transformation also generates conflict. How does Demopraxy address dissent and the inevitable frictions between differing visions within such broad participatory processes? Can recognizing food as a human right also become a tool for peace?
Conflict is inevitable in difference. Its resolution is not obvious and is never entirely predetermined in open and free systems, such as natural and social ones. Conflict therefore entails work—and in this work there is energy (indeed, in physics, energy is defined as work). This energy can tend toward three fundamental outcomes: a deflagration that destroys the entire context; the dominance of one side over the other; or a negotiated state of equilibrium, likely dynamic.
The first two outcomes require no human intelligence—natural intelligence suffices, the kind that equips animals and ecosystems with automated, embodied capacities for action and reaction. These tend naturally toward the dominance of the strongest within ecosystems, which accommodate this dominance within a general harmony at the expense of the weakest.
Humanity, however, has discovered a third path, which requires distinctly human—and not natural—qualities, competencies, and talents. Among these artificial talents is the capacity to invent something that did not exist before, something that accommodates or reconciles the contrasting or conflicting reasons of the elements at play. To do this requires an art—or a technique, as the ancient Greeks would have said, since téchne (τέχνη) means art—that is learned as an evolution of human intelligence, knowledge, and know-how.
Thus, art is not only the representation of beauty or truth, as interpreted throughout cultural history; it is also the capacity to resolve the conflicts triggered by difference, guiding this energy toward the creation of something that did not exist before—an harmony that can resonate like a song or a voice, capable of embracing the living dynamics of existence even in its performance and transformation.
To achieve this, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte have developed in recent years the Formula of Creation, which maps a dynamic relational process that constructs a central third space between two lateral circles or spaces, where this téchne is exercised.
But it must be learned, practiced, and trained; one cannot expect to be born Mozart (and even Mozart went to school). One must be willing to learn and relearn, because if harmony and equilibrium are dynamic, learning must also be dynamic—constantly renegotiated and relearned as reality evolves. Consider, for example, how the acceleration of new technologies and artificial intelligence generates scenarios that cannot be fully addressed using only past paradigms and techniques. We must invent the very mechanisms through which we create thought.

Signing a petition is a simple gesture. How can it become a truly transformative political act rather than merely a symbolic one? What is your personal appeal?
Manifest yourselves! The time has come for each of us to listen with feeling, to express with skill, language, and presence what we feel—and to manifest it: to make it visible and explicit by fully inhabiting collective space. So let us feel, express, and manifest. Signing a petition is a form that manifests who you are and that you are—because you manifest the very fact of being, as well as who you wish to be, and thus who you perform in that moment. Therefore: let us manifest ourselves!

To conclude, let’s look toward the future: if this Initiative succeeds, what might be the next right or field of transformation to be addressed through the same demopractic method? What kind of cultural legacy would you like Good Food for All to leave, regardless of the legislative outcome?
I trust that nuclei for practicing this method will emerge in many places, not only in Europe—taking paths that may be ECIs within the EU and different forms elsewhere.
I hope that around the program and framework of demopraxy—with the demopractic artwork, its scenes, mapping, forums, and workshops, as occurred in Geneva over recent years for Good Food for All—multiple initiatives will arise, inspired by this experience and many others.
For us and for Cittadellarte, I believe the time has come to face a challenge that could not be addressed before: the challenge of planetary manifestation. A global referendum that seizes the opportunity offered by technologies that were unthinkable ten years ago and now reach well over three quarters of the world’s population. The remaining quarter, even without smartphones, can express their opinions in streets, through mail, or in collective spaces such as hospitals, schools, or nursing homes.
We are therefore working to imagine and construct a great global consultation to declare the end of all wars.
In the past, artists and thinkers have declared the end of a conflict—think of John Lennon’s War Is Over or Allen Ginsberg’s pacifist poem Wichita Vortex Sutra (1966). John and Allen referred to the Vietnam War, just as Aristophanes, 2,500 years ago in Lysistrata, focused on a specific conflict. We, instead, are speaking of declaring the end of all wars.
Who should make such a declaration? A dictator? Someone else? The United Nations? I believe the time has come to unite actions, acknowledging that they are already united—but that is not enough. We must create United Actions, indeed a world organization of united actions. And the first action must be a declaration of the end of all wars, followed—through demopraxy—by forums around the world that explore what declaring the end of wars actually entails.
These forums will define it across continents, countries, and cultures. They may articulate what Preventive Peace—proposed by Michelangelo Pistoletto over recent decades—means, and how it should be developed by experts working in diverse planetary contexts.
For now, this is my dream. From dream to program, the path is sometimes so long that one lifetime is not enough to traverse it; other times, only a few minutes suffice.
We shall see which will be our case.

For further information on the initiative, please visit the official Good Food For All website and our previous article.

The proposal can be signed at the following link: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/053/public/#/screen/home