“Weigh your words” with a passion for exactitude, as if a speech or a written page were a chemical compound; “Do not trust inaccurate words”, just as you wouldn’t randomly mix acids and bases, to avoid disaster; and finally, write about “technical things as seen through the eye of an author while tracing the letters as a technician would.” Quotes by Primo Levi, which the great linguist Gian Luigi Beccaria revived for an event scheduled as part of the Festival del Classico in Turin (as mentioned in la Repubblica, 26 November), and their message is really rather similar to the one preached by refined author Italo Calvino, likewise captivated by the exact nature of scientific culture: “Focus only on difficult things that have been perfectly accomplished; be wary of easy ways, laziness, slapdash attitudes. Focus on accuracy, both in language and in the things you do” (as also mentioned in our blog post from 18 October).

Chemistry and literature. The desire to accomplish things to perfection. The rigour and the beauty that searching for the right word and the correct chemical or mathematical formula entails – indeed, to Levi, “loving one’s work is what most fully and concretely constitutes happiness on earth”, as shown by the passion conveyed by his Il sistema periodico (The periodic table) and his fascination with Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, and the same with his La chiave a stella (The wrench) and the eagerness he felt in building mechanical installations such as metal towers and cranes. Moreover, it’s further evidence of a focus on a “polytechnic culture” – typically Italian, fervently technological and poetically unique – blending humanities and sciences.

This is what we should reflect on when discussing culture, and so, by extension, also education, training, know-how (or “tell-how”, from a writer’s viewpoint): the relationship that exists between culture and enterprise, memory and innovation, history and future, techne and aesthetics, under the powerful banner of an “industrial humanism” that binds together competitiveness and environmental and social sustainability, productivity and solidarity.

These are strong values, which need to be learned at school, experienced not as ancillary to education, as inferior to productive work skills and processes, but as part of a concurrent and organised relationship between work skills and civil duties that also include initiative, freedom and responsibility. Rereading Primo Levi is useful, indeed, along with Sinisgalli, Vittorini, Sereni, Natta and all those scientists and authors who held an ample and inclusive notion of culture: poets-cum-engineers, engineers-cum-philosophers, writers with a passion for technology and science.

Hence, in order to discuss “merit” in education while also “entering into its merits”, ITS (higher technical institutes, also called ITS Academies, highlighting the high educational value they offer to upper secondary school graduates) must be part of the conversation, and we should seriously think about the possible content offered by their programmes. In fact, we should borrow from Levi and Calvino, in order to highlight how educational processes – even those most tailored to the world of work – need to integrate a multidisciplinary, a “polytechnic” dimension, blending humanities and sciences and paying particular attention not merely to skills but also to the complexity of knowledge systems and the invaluable nature of a “know-how” attitude, as well as to a special focus on the whys and hows of things, up to a concept of “learning to learn” in its deepest sense.

In Italy, only 21,000 students are enrolled in ITS, as compared to 800,000 in equivalent institutions in Germany – this is also due to the fact that fewer than two students out of ten are aware of them, according to a survey launched by Talents Venture Observatory among high-school students (Il Sole24Ore, 28 November), while a little over four (42%) students have only heard of them and the other four don’t even know that they exist. Yet, these institutes guarantee good employment opportunities at the end of their two-year programme (80% of graduates find work within 12 months, as compared to the average 70% of university graduates).

As such, to have them grow, we need extraordinary commitment from the public and private spheres, fast and targeted public investments (the PNRR, the Italian recovery and resilience plan, can provide €1.5 billion but 18 out of the 19 decrees required to authorise a first expense of €500 million have not yet been approved) and fiscal stimulus supporting those foundations that launch them in close cooperation with productive areas and enterprises based in industrial territories. According to Giovanni Brugnoli, vice president for Human Capital at territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria, we are also very much in need of “extensive training and guidance activities for families, students and teachers”. Human capital looking for value. Young generations more attentive than ever to anything that might rebuild a climate of hope and confidence in a better future.

Training, communication, guidance for companies. “New skills for new careers within the environmental and digital twin transition”, declares UniCredit Lombardia, refining initiatives aimed at tackling this mismatch, this discrepant gap between labour supply and demand (companies can’t find professionals, yet Italy has the highest unemployment rate among young people in Europe). And, especially in the most industrialised regions of the north of the country, companies’ productivity and competitiveness, as compared to international competitors, is not growing due to the lack of graduates (from ITS Academies, but also from standard technical institutes) and technologically advanced skills.

This, then, is the issue we need to urgently address: that of STEM education (the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics), which should be reclassified and enhanced into STEAM by adding an ‘a’ for arts – the humanities, the sense of beauty – to attain a refined culture based on individuality and quality, just like the values of design, to mention a more illustrative example, which Italian enterprises with international ambitions have been nurturing for a long time now. A taste for exactitude and perfection – which the teachings of Primo Levi must continue to inspire in us.

The Selection Ceremony for the finalists of the Premio Campiello Junior award will be held on Friday 16 December 2022 at 11 a.m., and live-streamed on the Pirelli Foundation‘s Facebook page and on the social media channels of the Premio Campiello.

During the ceremony, the finalist books will be announced, three for each of the two categories of the award: 7-10 years and 11-14 years. The selection will be made by a Jury of Writers chaired by Roberto Piumini with Chiara Lagani, actress  and playwright, Martino Negri , lecturer of didactics of literature and of literature for children at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Michela Possamai, lecturer at the IUSVE University of Venice, and former member of the Campiello Giovani jury, and David Tolin, bookseller and president of ALIR.

The speakers at the meeting, which will be moderated by Giancarlo Leone, will include Antonio Calabrò, director of the Pirelli Foundation and Enrico Carraro, president of the Fondazione Il Campiello.

After the selection of the finalists, it will be the turn of the Readers’ Jury: 240 young people from across Italy and from abroad will have the task of reading the finalists’ books and saying which one they like best, in order to decide the two winners, who will be proclaimed in May 2023, with the prize awarded in September 2023.

To follow the live stream, please click here.

For further information on Premio Campiello Junior events, please go to www.fondazionepirelli.org  and www.premiocampiello.org.

21 EoF stories, among thousands, now collected in a book

A different economy, yet an all-comprehensive one, encompassing enterprises, markets, development and growth, but with no exploitation or self-profit. This is what The Economy of Francesco (EoF) movement is all about, whose now regular events involve thousands of young people directly invited by Pope Francis to revamp the way in which we conceive and live the economy, through the wonderful means of narration. And these stories – some of them, at least – have now been collected in a book entitled The economy of Francesco. Il racconto dei protagonisti per una nuova economia (The economy of Francesco. The story of the protagonists for a new economy), collaboratively curated by Maria Giaglione and Marco Girardo with a precise goal: to render a sense of adventure made of ideals, experiences, tangible proposals and no ideologies.

Thus, the protagonists of this book are EoF young people and, above all, their individual stories, unfolding over the past two years, in view of a global summit in Assisi. The works includes 21 chapters (better described as stories) representing 3,000 young people from 115 countries across the world, and in just under 100 gripping pages, it really encompasses a bit of everything. Stories of economists, entrepreneurs and change-makers, as Luigino Bruni writes in his foreword, pointing out that, “It really feels like reading One thousand and one nights, as here, too, each story ends at the beginning of the next one.”

Subdivided in the book as “stories from the first year” and “stories from the second year” (some of the latter penned by writers from the Avvenire newspaper), these are individual narrations that perfectly describe a different economy than the traditional one and thus outline, too, an unexpected corporate culture in which closing the ledgers is not purely a question of arithmetic. Hence, to give some examples, we read about plantations mindful of workers and the environment, the challenge of microcredit in Africa, start-ups supporting the homeless, the importance of training and education as a response to growing inequality, the inclusion of ethics in American industry, how much diplomatic and financial relations could (if one wanted to) impact the energy transition, and much more.

Commenting on this collection, Maria Giaglione writes that EoF is an “eco-system of people and relationships, born of our times to alert us that there is still hope.” While, taking a different viewpoint, Marco Girardo tells us that EoF “interweaves stories from different places, concrete accounts and converging visions (…) in order to narrate itself and also how we can devise a more comprehensive way to conceive the economy and thus human development.” All this driven by the power of narrative, and though we might end up disagreeing with or even doubting some of these stories, we should nonetheless read them all – that’s the significance of this slim volume curated by Gaglione and Girardo.

The economy of Francesco. Il racconto dei protagonisti per una nuova economia (The economy of Francesco. The story of the protagonists for a new economy)

Maria Gaglione, Marco Girardo (curated by)

Avvenire/Vita e Pensiero, 2022

Globalisation and the pandemic have led to widespread intercultural and virtual working groups that need, however, to be properly understood and “governed”

‘Cross-cultural virtual teams’, or, the virtual (and virtuous) intersection of different cultures within a group. Different experiences creating positive contamination. Sowing new seeds for a better, improved and higher-quality crop. These are also themes around which a corporate culture aiming to remain up-to-date, topical and more competitive revolves around and, therefore, reading “The management of cross-cultural virtual teams” intervention by Nuno Baptista (researcher at the School of Social Communication in Lisbon) and recently published on European Journal of Human Resource Management Studies, will prove very useful.

The author’s aim is to explore “the contingencies of intercultural virtual teams, discussing the main challenges they entail and exploring a number of practices to manage them in a virtual environment.” Thus, Baptista wants to reach a better understanding of the reality arisen after the pandemic, starting with an observation: “The accelerated development of information technologies and communication, the transformation of entrepreneurial activities that are now more global and competitive, and the prevalence of services based on knowledge and information have led to the emergence of new models of virtual work teams, more flexible and adaptable, which go beyond typical departmental functions and require the collaboration of employees with different skills, opinions and abilities.” The whole phenomenon was then further accelerated by the outbreak of COVID-19.

In order to achieve his aim, Baptista first focuses on the main possible virtual and intercultural working groups, then goes on to outline these groups’ potential organisation and “governance” strategies, and finally describes the shape and meaning that their leaders take. Thus, in his conclusions the author points out the working difficulties that, however, these groups may encounter (from different perspectives to work habits), while nonetheless emphasising their value. In the end, “governance” skills, culture and ethics remain the most effective tools to make the most of these experiences.

The management of cross-cultural virtual teams

Nuno Baptista, European Journal of Human Resource Management Studies, 6/2022

“Shaping the future” – this is the motto that defines the new 2022/23 academic year at the University of Milano-Bicocca, which counts 37,000 students, 1,200 professors, 73 programmes and a swift climb in international ranking concerning quality of teaching and research. A future that needs to be built on the awareness of the past, comments rector Giovanna Iannantuoni; or, as Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, strategically put it, “The history of Europe is a history of Renaissance.”

Thus, the Renaissance as identity marker and foundation for development, and memory as an asset for growth. A grand scheme “to future memory”, as the latest work by Leonardo Sciascia – one of the best literary and civic minds of 20^th-century Europe – is concisely and intriguingly entitled. Retaining some doubts (…“if memory had a future”), however, while remaining acutely sensitive to the power of reason. Relying, in other words, on a newly found enlightened spirit – an essential feature in an era when science and critical knowledge are looked at with distrust, replaced by “magical thinking” as well as, even more regrettably, the wiles of fake news and trends inspired by so-called “utopias of escape” where a too hard reality and too cumbersome responsibilities – “utopias of reconstruction”, as per Lewis Mumford’s rigorous definition – are replaced by “idols”.

A critical Renaissance, then, celebrating enlightened thinking and, further, unafraid of confronting its darker sides (as the extraordinary Hieronymus Bosch exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan clearly shows).

The University of Milano-Bicocca has been in operation for 25 years now. It was built, and later expanded, in the Bicocca neighbourhood, north of Milan, an area where great industrial developments took place in the 20^th-century – first the Pirelli plant, followed, moving towards Sesto San Giovanni, by the Breda metalworks and the Falck steelworks. Assembly lines and workshops, foundries and rolling mills, the whistles of sirens marking the beginning and end of work shifts, train tracks entering the plants to load goods and tram stops crowded with workers. Rigorous, difficult, active and proud work – productive work, rife with technical skills and political, unionist and civic-minded notions.

Only memories are left of all this (also thanks to the documents and images preserved in the historical archives of the Pirelli Foundation and the ISEC (the Institute for contemporary history), as well as a heritage built on culture and passions. At the end of the 20^th century, Vittorio Gregotti deftly designed a neighbourhood that would accommodate both universities and enterprises, cultural sites and sports spaces, homes and services: an urban dimension able to develop the blend of beauty and functionality embodied by Gio Ponti’s Pirelli Skyscraper and anticipate the trends of a future Milan, now home to the Porta Nuova and City Life skyscrapers, a transformed Bovisa district and the MIND (the “Milan Innovation District”) area.

Nowadays, the phrase “industrial humanism” is often heard in meetings about the relevance of corporate culture – a phrase that also recalls company magazines (such as the Rivista Pirelli, the Civiltà delle Macchine by Finmeccanica/Iri, the Comunità by Olivetti and the Il Gatto Selvatico by Eni) and the role they played in stimulating a better culture in the 1950s and 1960s.  And to this we can also add “polytechnic culture”, to indicate that blend of humanities and sciences – rigorous techne and a sophisticated sense of beauty, engineering and philosophy – distinguishing those periods, which have evolved into a “manufacturing Renaissance”, the phrase that the international press has adopted to denote the Italian industry of the year 2000, ruled by mechatronics and the digital economy.

Here we are again, then, to a term that’s so dear to universities, encapsulating the dynamism of factories that have transformed into “factories of ideas and knowledge”, of industry that has become a cultural space where skills for a better future are born. Indeed, industry always showed a multidisciplinary spirit and that’s especially relevant today, in an era when widespread Artificial Intelligence calls for engineers-cum-philosophers and mathematicians able to design algorithms that are both socially and morally ethical as well as technically innovative, chemists and sociologists, data scientists and jurists, architects and digital economy experts, psychologists and cyber-security technicians. All working together in hybrid neo-factories generating production and research and in high-tech services and state-of-the-art centres where criteria of environmental and social sustainability steeped in a “do, do well and do good” attitude are formulated.

Universities are the key cornerstones within this process and this loudly resounds in the speeches opening the new academic year at the Bicocca-Milano, Polytechnic, Bocconi and Cattolica universities, as well as at the State and IULM universities, and all other academic institutions that make the Great Milan a special site of knowledge and change.

Smart cities are the future (as Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab in Boston, highlighted in his keynote address) and in order to exist and grow, in line with new and improved economic and social balances, need smart lands – territory where the quality of life, competitiveness and social inclusion go hand in hand. Yet, above all, they need smart citizens, social actors able to lead an active, aware, critical and responsible civic life. Here we are again, then, looking to the future – a confidence gambit for the new generations, supported by a good university education.

(photo Getty images)

 Our publishing project Thinking Ahead. Pirelli: 150 Years of Industry, Innovation and Culture, published this year by Marsilio, has received two important honours for its promotion of corporate heritage.

This morning, at the Confindustria congress centre in Rome, we received the first prize in the “Storytelling through words, images and sounds” category of the 2022 Corporate Heritage Awards. The award is promoted by Leaving Footprints, an academic spinoff of the University of Naples Parthenope with the University of Sannio, specialised in consulting in the field of heritage marketing. The aim of the award is to showcase and tell the stories of the companies that have played a role in the development of Italy, to help promote and develop corporate culture.

The book also obtained the Montegrappa Special Mention for the promotion of Company Heritage at the 2022 OMI Awards, which will be given on 19 November in the Assembly Hall of the Polo Zanotto at the University of Verona. Now in its sixth edition, the primary aim of the Osservatorio Monografie d’Impresa award is to promote institutional monographs as a means for enhancing corporate communication and reputation.

Corporate storytelling is essential for making known the values of a large company like Pirelli, which has reached a century and a half in business by constantly focusing on innovation in all disciplines.

A recently published research study focuses on enterprising communities

Communities that develop with an aim – communities that “achieve”. Existing social systems with something extra, which also have a lot to say in terms of organisation, embodying a weighty culture of being and accomplishment. Communities, then, that should certainly be analysed and better understood, which is what a Euricse research group did with “Le comunità intraprendenti in Italia” (“Enterprising communities in Italy”), a recently published report that attempts to shed some light on a facet of the economy and of society that many claim to know and be a part of, but whose key features still need to be fully explored.

The study, coordinated by Jacopo Sforzi, revolves around a particular observation: “Since the end of this century’s first decade, when the heavy consequences of the financial crisis on income levels and employment were felt, reliance on the term ‘community’ and on community resources has progressively increased. The pandemic, and now the energy crisis, have further contributed to this evolution.” And, additionally, there is the realisation that it is “finally clear how initiatives promoted by communities are able to bring forth and capitalise on economic resources that our model, purely based on a private goods/public goods dyad, has been neglecting and thus ignored, because unable to situate them within its own system.”

Starting from here, the paper first highlights the distinctive features and widespread nature of Italian enterprising communities, before further exploring the main types of community in existence: community hubs, community enterprises, complex collaboration agreements, neighbourhood caretaker groups, social markets and food banks, communities supporting agriculture, food cooperatives, energy communities and FabLabs. Each enterprising community is described in qualitative and quantitative terms, and for each some concrete examples are given. What emerges is a complex and varied picture of a world that, as we mentioned above, is substantial yet not fully understood.

“Virtuous examples of social innovation” – this is how the study defines them in its conclusions – such communities acquire a new aspect and a new role as drivers of a different social and production culture.

Indeed, such conclusions also add that, “It becomes obvious, then, how the different experiences encompass several intervention areas, which vary depending on the needs and resources of each single community, and succeed in joining together cultural, social, economic and also political activities. In addition, it is also possible to identify the enterprising communities described in this report as efficient tools for the activation and consolidation of territories’ social capital.” In other words, this is a promising world that has just been discovered and, as such, needs to be further investigated.

Le comunità intraprendenti in Italia (“Enterprising communities in Italy”)

Various authors.

Euricse Research Report, 023/22

Proposing a new work method that attempts to tackle our current complexities and ambiguities

Working while overwhelmed by uncertainty, yet doing so well and effectively. Production, no matter what. This is the challenge faced by virtually all those working in enterprises (not only private ones) and, more in general, in production organisations that deal with real life or, rather, with the complexities of real life, as well as its changeable nature and ambiguities, features that seem to increasingly define the environment in which we operate.

This is the context from which La cultura dell’incertezza (The culture of uncertainty), written by Andrea Guida, unravels, and its subtitle immediately clarifies its main goal: to provide readers with some advice on how to “govern organisations in a complex world”. The author, who spent years facilitating corporate collaborative activities, harnessed his own experience to devise a method that could prove useful in steering companies even through the most complex spells.  This is called ‘systems leadership’ and it is based on the awareness of needing new tools to tackle the complexities, ambiguities and uncertainties that riddle organisations and their surrounding world. For Andrea Guida, the key point is to look at issues in a different way and work together in a more effective manner (by applying a strategy identified as ‘co-design’), to act more speedily and in a more controlled manner in everyday life and when crises arise.

All this is explained in just under 200 pages and four chapters, starting with the mistakes we currently make in the workplace, moving on to a list of “ingredients to perform well” and a more in-depth exploration of the systems leadership method, and ending with a number of insights on single operational aspects.

Guida’s work certainly requires careful reading and should be put to the test in real life, in order to fully appraise its potential in yielding results. Results that cannot really be taken for granted, though a concrete application of this method could actually determine its worth as a tool for the creation of a better working environment in production organisations currently struggling with the dramatic changes occurring within their structures and cultures.

La cultura dell’incertezza (The culture of uncertainty)

Andrea Guida

Guerini Next, 2022

Umberto Eco slowly walks across the rooms of his large house in Piazza Castello, in Milan – a veritable ‘house of books’ with more than 30,000 volumes collected over years of study, research, and literary and cultural passion. This image is actually a long-shot sequence scene from the black and white documentary entitled Umberto Eco. La biblioteca del mondo (Umberto Eco. The library of the world), directed by Davide Ferrario and soon to be presented in Milan, at the Anteo cinema, by the Belleville Writing School, as part of the BookCity book festival (it will come out in cinemas in February, as a Fandango production).

Choosing Eco’s private library – as well as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20^th century – as the image promoting a festival that’s unique in Italy and that, year after year (this is the 11^th edition), from 16 to 20 November, attracts tens of thousands of people and offers almost 1,500 events such as meetings with the authors, public readings and debates, scattered throughout the city, is an apt and symbolic decision.

“A festival dedicated to books and to reading,” concisely explains Piergaetano Marchetti, president of the BookCity Foundation and influential figure within Milan’s cultural and economic world. And, further, it’s an engaging way to highlight the close relationship between living and reading, attempting to understand and narrate the world, creating and undertaking, defying time through history and stories to set the scene for a better future.

In fact, books most effectively epitomise the opportunities contained within the “future of memory”.

Moreover, Milan is, after all, a city that thrives on progressive – yet also more mainstream and widespread – culture. Indeed, Antonio Greppi, mayor of Milan during that complex post-war period marked by frenzied reconstruction, promised “Bread and culture” while both the entrepreneurial middle class and the most sensible political powers promoted cultural activities such as theatre and musical events through generous and long-term financial sponsorships (the Casa della Cultura Association on via Borgogna – still active today – is only one instance of such efforts). Even today, associations and industries still focus on culture – just this year, entrepreneurial institution Assolombarda awarded Padua the title of “capital of corporate culture”, as culture, to companies, not only signifies sponsorship opportunities but also an asset enhancing the identity and competitive nature of enterprises, through a unique, international “polytechnic culture” blending both humanities and sciences.

A study by AIE (Associazione degli Editori, the Italian publishing trade association), undertaken specifically for BookCity in collaboration with Pepe Research, shows that 75% of Milanese citizens read at least one book per year (not a lot, of course, but nonetheless more than the national average), while 59% has attended at least one cultural event. “Events and reading are part of Milan’s virtuous equation”, points out with some satisfaction the Corriere della Sera newspaper, while the headline by la Repubblica reads “Milan as capital of cultural consumption”. Then again, the annual research survey “Io sono cultura” (“I am culture”), curated by Symbola and Unioncamere (recently presented first at the MAXXI in Rome and then at Casa Fornasetti in Milan), reveals that Milan and the Lombardy region are at the forefront, in Italy, in terms of consumption, entrepreneurship and cultural activities.

Thus, Milan as the city of books, of great publishing houses that have made history (Mondadori, Rizzoli, Bompiani, Feltrinelli, Adelphi, Mauri-Spagnol’s Longanesi, etc.) and new publishing ventures (La nave di Teseo, NN Editore, Iperborea, to mention just a few amongst many); of historic bookshops in evolution (Hoepli) and many other independent ones that have been opened, with much passion and wisdom, both in the centre and in the suburbs; of public and private libraries in cultural centres and in schools, as well as in companies and apartment blocks.

Reading for fun, savouring the pleasure a book can give. Reading to understand and learn. Reading to defy time and get to know different lives and experiences, just as Umberto Eco taught us: “At the age of 70, those who don’t read will have led only one life – their own! Those who read will have lived 5,000 years: they were there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired the infinite… Because literature is backwards immortality.”

Here we find yet another trait of Milan, inspired by reading and culture: the ability to understand others’ ways of life, which entails social inclusion, a welcoming spirit and integration, an aptitude that uniquely combines economic competitiveness and solidarity. Reading to “comprehend” (with its Latin root cum, the same as “comprehension” and “community”). Reading to grow.

Losing such traits would mean losing the soul of Milan.

Let’s pay heed to books, then, and to the public spaces dedicated to books, such as libraries, bookshops and cultural events like BookCity, as well as private spaces like homes where books are at the heart of a family’s language and social interaction (this has been so since Cicero’s times, by the by: “A room without books is like a body without a soul”).

Though here we encounter a critical spot: new urban architectural designs, the “thousand lights” of Milan and buzzing “events”, opulent consumption and showy wealth, ‘archistars’ and skyscrapers in glass and steel redefining the skyline, high-tech homes and floor plans, leave very little room for bookshelves, for spaces dedicated to books. Of course, the new digital generations have a preference for eBooks – yet, are we truly confident that the disappearance of home libraries shouldn’t make us ponder about its architectural, cultural and social meaning?

(Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)

Reading is a journey. You can live through a thousand adventures and explore the world not just in novels, but also in poems. The passion for books needs to be nurtured from an early age, but it is important to keep it going throughout your life by taking books everywhere – even into offices and factories.

At the Pirelli HQ Auditorium on Thursday 24 November 2022, at 11 a.m., the Pirelli Foundation is organising “Parole in viaggio”, a meeting devoted to the world of books, during which girls and boys from lower secondary schools will be able to get to know the writer and poet Roberto Piumini, and Antonella Sbuelz, the winner of the first edition of the Premio Campiello Junior with her novel Questa notte non torno. With them and with Antonio Calabrò, the director of the Pirelli Foundation, and Alessandra Tedesco, a journalist with Radio 24, the students will be able to discover how a story takes shape and how the characters created by the mind of a writer come to life.

The Pirelli Foundation, which has always put great emphasis on promoting reading among the younger generations as well as in the workplace, is supporting the Premio Campiello Junior award for the second year running. To find out more, visit the websites of the Pirelli Foundation and of the Premio Campiello.

For information about the “Parole in viaggio” event, please write to scuole@fondazionepirelli.org