The president of the Casa dello Spirito e delle Arti foundation explains where the idea for this project came from.
In Italy’s largest prison, in Milan, wood from migrant boats is recycled into musical instruments.
The Metamorphosis project, initiated by the Casa dello Spirito e delle Arti foundation, aims to rehabilitate prisoners and ensure that the tragedies that occurred in the Mediterranean do not fall into oblivion.
“This project was born from a question, explains the director of the foundation Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori. Why them and not me? Why were there these people, these children on the boat and no sons? When I saw these children getting off the boat in Lampedusa and learned that these boats had been destroyed by the government as special waste, I said to myself: Why can’t they become a living memory and remind everyone this tragedy which could also have been mine, that of my son?’ Because if we had been born there, this would have happened to us.”
The “Sea Orchestra” brought instruments created in prison to life during a concert at La Scala in Milan.
According to the UN, more than 22,000 migrants have died or gone missing during the perilous crossing of the central Mediterranean since 2014.