The ‘Stop ReArm Europe – Roma’ campaign group has issued an appeal to the artists scheduled to perform at the Roma Summer Fest 2025. The music festival is set to begin on August 29th at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone and will feature musicians known for their social activism, including Patti Smith and Daniele Silvestri. The group is calling on them to “raise their voices” against the venue’s use for the Defence Summit, an event for the military industry scheduled for September 11th.
The promoting group, a coalition of over 70 associations, movements, and political parties, which brought over 100,000 people to a national demonstration in Rome on June 21st, labeled the situation “absurd.” They stated that hosting a “warmongering policy event” in the prestigious Auditorium is a “stark contrast” to the statutory aims of the Musica per Roma Foundation, which manages the venue. They noted the facility was previously denied for a peace initiative but is now being used as a “stage for an ‘arms fair.'”
The group further emphasized that the same military technology on display is also supplied by Italy to Israel, which they accuse of carrying out a “genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the Middle East.” Expressing hope that the “world of music and culture” would become a vehicle for dialogue from the stage, the coalition announced its own “Social Summit” to be held outside the Auditorium on September 11th. They have issued a “call to the arts” for artists to join them in creative forms of protest against the Defence Summit.