The Prato Phygital Project and the Cinema Digital Cinema Manifactures in Prato

In 2022 Fondazione Sistema Toscana, as the leader of a grouping of nine partners, was awarded a funding of EUR 1 000 000 through the 5G call for proposals from the MIMIT (Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, formerly MISE). The aim of the Ministry was to make the practical applications of the new 5G technology understandable to businesses and to do so it turned to the audiovisual sector. FST imagined an initial experiment of a short film with a narrative plot, within a scale model of a studio theatre equipped for virtual reality. It was decided to work with all the available features: a mature textile district, Manifatture Digitali Cinema – MDC (a reference place for audiovisual productions and for training activities in the cinema professions) and two significant archives, a museum archive and a corporate and more recent one. The experimentation aimed at investigating in depth the dynamics of the continuous collaboration between the audiovisual and the textile and fashion sectors. This project used the 5G technological infrastructure as an essential support to the development of audiovisual products. The role of the public system is to enhance local expertise, to foster the training of professional profiles useful to the national and international audiovisual market and to develop Tuscany’s attractiveness for film and audiovisual productions through the implementation of technologies to attract resources and know-how, by placing an infrastructure set up with public resources (MDC) at the center of the implementation phase.