“Handicrafts are riches to be treasured because they nurture traditions and unleash creativity,” says Federica, President of the Association, with the emotion of a woman in love. The mission is generating relationships and sharing knowledge between the elderly and the young, promoting a village that is alive, even in winter.

Tradition means delivering and transmitting memory, in time and space, so that identity is experienced and witnessed as a value that creates sharing, encounters and cross-over creativity. What happens when the bearers of tradition, the elderly, meet the creative genius of the young is tangible in the streets of the town and in the faces of the people during a Felici & Conflenti event. A programme of activities that stirs body and soul, renewing feelings of sociability and sharing, in a sunny, cheerful and happy atmosphere.

Rossella Fazio’s haberdashery workshop, where, amidst fabrics and yarn, she uses her skilful hands to weave stories on the loom, presenting contemporary weaving works rooted in an ancient history but above all in the feminine soul of the town of chairs.

A passion for books and reading inspired Rosario Rubbettino, secretary of the Secondary Lower School, to open a bookshop in the village. That was in 1965 when he was 24 years old. In 1972 he opened a small printing shop with second-hand machinery and went on to become a publisher. At a time when the fissures between the north and south of Italy were becoming deep ravines, in Soveria Mannelli, in an area lacking infrastructure and connections, a top-level industrial structure was brought into reality. Today his sons Florindo and Marco are continuing this marvellous adventure with the same courage: from lead printing to digital technology, the Rubbettino publishing house is a symbol of great entrepreneurial, social and cultural vision, made in Calabria.

Welcome to a story of great beauty, intelligence, elegance and courage. Founded in 1873 and the first textile factory in Calabria, the Leo wool mill is a living, concrete embodiment of the memory of the future. A visit to this museum-enterprise is a journey into a dimension where past and future coexist in the present. Lanificio Leo is a material and immaterial laboratory on contemporaneity where design is the filter used to push the boundaries of geographical, economic and technological factors.