With seven patents granted and 39 applications for others made during 2009, Pirelli also celebrated its innovative ability this year with the Invention Awards ceremony and the traditional presentation of gold and silver plaques.

Gold plaques were presented for product, production process and materials patents on Thursday 16 December at the Pirelli Foundation, Bicocca. Seventeen Pirelli Tyre and Parts inventors received their plaques from Pirelli chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera.

Speakers who described the importance of the award-winning inventions were Francesco Gori, managing director of Pirelli Tyre and director general of Tyre and Parts, Pier Giovanni Giannesi, director of industrial property and Maurizio Boiocchi, Pirelli Tyre product director.

A ceremony at which silver plaques were presented to the originators of 39 patents filed in 2009 for Pirelli Tyre, Pirelli Labs and Pirelli & C. Eco Technology was held in the auditorium of the Pirelli Tyre building at Bicocca on Wednesday 22 December.

Today, at the Pirelli Foundation, Mara Carfagna, Italian Equal Opportunity Minister, Roberto Formigoni, president of the Region of Lombardy, and Marco Trochetti Provera, chairman of the Pirelli Group, in the presence of Tiberiu Dinu, the Romanian Consulate General in Milan, and Pasquale Cannatelli, the general manager of the Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital, signed an agreement to broaden the international healthcare cooperation agreement between the Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital in Milan and the Slatina Hospital in Romania, which began in 2008, and to renew the agreement until 2013.

Over the next three years, the new international healthcare cooperation project will involve the medical and nursing staff of the Romanian hospital in theoretical and practical training in radiology and burn therapy, as well as in topics related to emergency medicine and first aid. Particular emphasis will also be placed on training in the field of gynaecology and in the prevention of female pathologies.

Over the three-year period, Pirelli will be making a contribution of roughly €400,000, thereby bringing the company’s total commitment since the project’s start to around one million euros. The agreement falls within the scope of the social initiatives that Pirelli is pursuing to support the local communities in which the company has production facilities.

A series of meetings to discuss the profession and image of the archivist, with a particular focus on product archives, which are the heart of a company’s historical archives, the documents of which come in various forms and represent the fruit of the company’s production efforts.

The date has been set for Friday, 26 November, in Turin at the Intesa Sanpaolo conference hall. Representing the Pirelli Foundation is Chiara Guizzi, archivist for the Pirelli Historical Archive, who will talk about the Group’s efforts to protect and develop the its cultural and historical heritage. This heritage comprises thousands of photos, films, documents, drawings and posters by the world’s most famous designers and for which a vast programme of recovery, inventory and digitalisation has begun.

Indeed, work has recently been completed on restoration of the advertising sketches for Pirelli’s tyre and fashion campaigns, which date back from the 1920s through to the 1960s.

We begin at the Gatto Meo, pass by PZero Boots, electrical cables encased in rubber and, of course, tyres, before completing our visit at the Pzero boots – a journey 138 years long, the key moments of which are embodied in the objects that represent them.

On Tuesday, 16 November, the Pirelli Foundation will be giving voice to two of these objects during the event “La parola all’oggetto. Alla scoperta dei musei e archivi d’impresa e della cultura industriale italiana tra tradizione e modernità” (Giving voice to objects. Discovering the museums and archives of Italian industrial culture and enterprise amidst tradition and modernity).

The event is part of Settimana della Cultura d’Impresa (Corporate Culture Week) and is dedicated to students, who will be able to actually watch the narration in the work of cartoonist Tiziano Riverso, who will be simultaneously translating the stories into drawings.

Also participating in the event, in addition to the Pirelli Foundation, are the Kartell Museum, the Barilla Historical Archive, the Alfa Romeo Historical Museum, and the Branca Collection.

Discovering the company through its history, its values and the creativity it has demonstrated over the years; looking at it through the eyes of those who have made it what it is today.

This is the significance of the project “I luoghi del lavoro, tra memoria e futuro” (Places of Work – memories and the future), three different itineraries to visit the company’s archives and the industrial museums, which both safeguard memories and serve as starting points from which to build the future of companies such as Campari, Kartell, Zambon, Branca and Pirelli.

The first stop along this journey of industrial tourism will be the Pirelli Foundation, which, together with Galleria Campari, will kick off the first itinerary on 15 November at 2:30pm.

Attendance for each itinerary is free of charge and subject to availability.

The third edition of Festival of Festivals 2010 has awarded the festival MiTo SettembreMusica and Pirelli, which, through the Pirelli Foundation, supported the festival with an important project of art and culture: the concert of I Fiati di Torino, ‘Music Returns to the Factory’.

A testimony to the profound relationship between music and the workplace, the concert won The Culture Business Partnership Award 2010, which is given to companies that invest in cultural events as an integral part of the project concerned. There to accept the award was Antonio Calabrò, Director of the Pirelli Foundation.

For the third consecutive year, the Festival of Festivals Awards put the spotlight on excellence in cultural events for the press, the market, institutions and the festival community to see.