From May 15 to 18, Florence’s foremost arts and crafts festival, Artigianato e Palazzo, will celebrate its 20th anniversary in the Corsini gardens. Embracing the future, the festival has launched a contest entitled Blogs & Crafts: Young Craftspeople and the Web, encouraging young artisans under the age of 35 and bloggers interested in the subjects of craft, lifestyle, fashion, and tourism to compete.
A special panel of judges will select 10 artisans to attend the festival, where they will work in a special exhibition area. The judges will also select 10 bloggers to provide live coverage of the event, through photos, videos and interviews, and to write up their experience of Artigianato e Palazzo at the festival’s close.
Founder and organizer Neri Torrigiani sees this creative move as a way of celebrating the festival’s past and future. ‘We want this year’s festival to be a restart and not a destination point. What better way to do this than to focus on young people? With Blogs & Crafts, we wanted to tie know-how with the ability to communicate, and today young people, more than anyone else, have understood the importance of being able to combine craftsmanship with technology. In short, re-evaluating craftsmanship to be more competitive in global markets.’
Artisans and bloggers under 35: applications for the contest are open until March 14. For more details (in Italian), see theflr.net/blogscrafts.
