Festival of Provinces

Itinerant Festival of Folk Culture

 

The Festival of Provinces binds ideally popular Italy to a system of relations, communications and activities.

This is the only itinerant national event dedicated to folk tradition. It is a network of institutions and territories expressing the highest quality in the context of popular culture, by showing witnesses, events and performances of the most important expressions of their own territories popular traditions.
 
The Festival of Provinces is a varied but coherent artistic program, including popular and experimental concerts, theater of research and commedia dell’arte, recitals, meetings with cultured music, performances exploring different artistic languages.
 
As document about “ networking”, the Festival of Provinces uses its itinerant stands to show folk traditions belonging to territories, which choose to join to the Network in this trip, so that each one can know everyone else, through this visionary and narrative path of dialogue.
 
According to the same end, the Festival of Provinces is working closely with the most unique Festival of Italian territory.
 
The birth and development of the Festival of Provinces, which came at its 8th edition, is, without doubt, a touch of excellence in the Italian cultural scene, by creating a true “  system of Italian popular culture”, until to be recognized even  by the institution of Italian  Network of Folk Culture, with the excellent guide of its artistic director, Antonio Damasco.
 
The Ministry for Cultural Heritage, in particular, the General Management of the Performing Arts, which I have the honor to direct, has recognized since some years the role played by the Festival of Provinces in the promotion of the immense Italian cultural heritage, made of arts and traditions, expressed in many local events, where sometimes creative reworks, about centuries old themes, reborn.
 
This wonderful event, with its festivals and its performances, creates a magical thread connecting Italian provinces from north to south, by letting communities interact among them and by inserting the events into a logical system, especially in relation to the promotion of territory.
 
Events such as the Festival of Provinces must strengthen the idea that believing and investing money in the show, as valuable intangible good, means increasing the prestige and the power of our culture.
Rome, June 2008
Dr. Salvatore Nastasi
GENERAL DIRECTOR OF LIVE SHOW MINISTRY FOR ARTS AND CULTURE