The first edition of the Premio Campiello Junior has come to an end with the victory of Quando la notte non torno by Antonella Sbuelz. The offspring of a partnership between the Fondazione Il Campiello and the Pirelli Foundation, the fledgling award honours works of fiction and poetry in Italian for children aged 10 to 14.

The final was hosted by Federico Russo and Virginia Stagni at the H-Farm in Roncade, under the watchful eyes of the young voters and the Selection Jury chaired by Roberto Piumini, to whose rhymes we entrust the invitation to the next edition:

Lettori amici,
siccome sono poeta,
vi parlerò di poesia,
dove ogni parola è un giuramento,
ogni parola vale,
ogni parola è davvero,
ogni parola ha un senso.
quest’oggi, lo sappiamo, è premiato
chi ha scritto storie, chi ha scritto parole,
perchè ci ha fatto un dono: ma che dono?
Io vi voglio parlare
di cosa accade leggendo
un racconto, un romanzo e, s’intende,
leggendo o ascoltando una poesia.
Sì, certamente, quando voi leggete,
avete la sorpresa di una storia,
di paesaggi e persone, e imparate
eventi eavventure, e questo è molto
perchè davvero soli noi saremmo
senza il conforto di altro e di altrove:
leggere di altri, vivi in altri luoghi,
in altri tempi, è buona compagnia.
Sicché, innanzitutto, quel che accade
È un patto fra chi scrive e chi legge:
uno dà le parole, uno dà l’attenzione.
Il patto è di passare un tempo insieme,
come fra amici: un tempo di presenza,
gioco e simpatia, tempo leale.
Accade anche un altro fatto, e patto:
leggendo, voi accettate, con l’autore,
di fare insieme un teatro, di giocare
di essere qualcuno che non siete,
fingere un’altra anima, e persino
un altro corpo.
Ma, voi direte, è solo l’autore
Quello che parla, che conduce il gioco,
che fa il regista nel teatro,
fa il maestro del coro: e invece
non è questo che accade.
Ecco quello che accade: ogni parola,
quando voi la leggete,
percorre tutta la vostra memoria,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
cerca e trova il vostro ricordo,
quello che voi sapete e ricordate,
e, a una velocità incalcolabile,
forma l’immagine.
Inizia una storia:
noi leggiamo: “Un cavallo,”
e prima che il nostro sguardo arrivi
alla terza parola,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
dentro il nostro cervello,
nel bianco santuario del cranio,
avviene una vertigine,
e ci tornano alla mente i cavalli
che abbiamo visto nella vita, oppure
quelli che abbiamo immaginato,
e il cavallo giocattolo
o quelli disegnati,
o visti un giorno al cinema,
in un cartone animato, o sognati.
Se poi abbiamo avuto la fortuna
di toccare un cavallo, o addirittura
di stargli in groppa, non solo
vediamo la sua immagine, ma sentiamo,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
anche il suo odore, e nelle gambe
lo sforzo di restare sulla sella,
e insomma, visto tutto, e ricordato,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
diamo a quella parola la sua immagine,
che è una nostra immagine segreta:
solo noi la sappiamo, solo noi,
e nemmeno l’autore che leggiamo.
Ogni parola, mentre la leggiamo,
ci ripercorre il tempo della vita,
ci pulisce le arterie del ricordo,
potente goccia di sangue sparviero,
ci rinfresca il pensiero di noi,
ci fruga e ci rinfresca l’esistenza.
E se dopo “Un cavallo” noi leggiamo,
appena dopo un attimo,
“galoppava in un bosco,” altri cavalli,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
ci correranno nella mente,
ricorderemo i boschi, ogni bosco,
con colori e odori,
e il fresco delle foglie sulla faccia,
l’intenso e vasto ronzio degli insetti,
e allora non vedremo, ma saremo
quel cavallo al galoppo, finchè, forse,
nell’attimo seguente, leggeremo
che in sella a quel cavallo, cavalcava,
“una giovane donna”.
Moltiplicate per ogni parola
La sciolta scorribanda che facciamo,
a una velocità incalcolabile,
nel santuario di ossa e di sangue,
nella memoria che è conoscenza.

Così, come l’autore, siamo autori.
Così, al profondo dono
che ha fatto chi ha scritto le parole,
con un profondo dono rispondiamo,
perchè le sue parole erano mute,
erano segni vuoti, fino a quando,
aprendo il libro, leggendo, le abbiamo
portate a pascolare nella mente,
a nutrirsi dei nostri ricordi,
e ciascuno di noi è un diverso pascolo,
e in diverse forme le parole
hanno avuto vita:
noi abbiamo immaginato, e le parole
hanno avuto infinito momento.
Quando donate un libro a un amico,
oltre a fargli il dono che sappiamo,
fate un nuovo dono all’autore:
un’altra vita e un’altra ricchezza
donate al dono delle sue parole:
un altro gioco e un altro teatro,
a una velocità incalcolabile.

The winner of the first edition of the Premio Campiello Junior was announced today, 6 May 2022, in the Big Hall of H-Farm in Roncade (Treviso). The winner, chosen by the students who formed the Jury of Readers between the three finalist books, is:

Antonella Sbuelz, Questa notte non torno, Feltrinelli

During the event, which was presented by Federico Russo together with Virginia Stagni, the president of the Selection Jury Roberto Piumini and the juror members Chiara Lagani, Michela Possamai and David Tolin told the young people present and all those taking part online about their passion for books and reading.

See you in 2023 at the next edition of the Prize!

To watch the recording of the event, click here.

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

Two very different but complementary spirits inspire the Pirelli Collezione line. These tyres have been created to offer the vintage car market tyres that perfectly satisfy the historical criteria demanded by the most attentive and passionate collectors. To do so, they combine the original look and driving dynamics for historic cars with the most advanced technologies, to ensure top performance and ever-greater safety.

Since the 1950s, Pirelli has greatly expanded its range of tyres, making them increasingly specialised for different types of vehicles and different seasons, and for particular road conditions, speeds and loads. Hundreds of plates were made from the 1950s to the 1970s for each type of tyre, to advertise them and make them instantly recognisable: photographs touched up with ink and airbrush picked out the shapes and lines of the treads on advertisements, price lists, and catalogues.

Today, more than seventy years later, those plates – together with the original product specifications and other technical documentation now in our Historical Archive – are used to reproduce Pirelli tyres that are historically precise. This has led to the creation of new versions of the iconic Stella Bianca and the Stelvio, as well as the Cinturato models from the 1960s, through to the most recent, but already “historic” lines: the super-low-profile P7 and P5 ordered by Jaguar, or the P Zero Rosso from the early 2000s created for Porsche.

Our partnerships with leading car manufacturers are interactive relationships that date back many years and still continue today. One example among many is the remaking of the Cinturato tyre for the various versions of the BMW Mini. Today’s compounds and technologies, which have been used for the creation of the Pirelli Collezione line, ensure reliability and high levels of safety. They also maintain the original style, which has been recreated by using pictures and designs made available by the Pirelli Foundation. This has led to the return of a great icon of the 1960s, with the certification not only of the previous Cinturato 367F and P3, but also the special homologation of the Eufori@ Run Flat, a tyre that is synonymous with reliability on the road, capable of travelling for 150 kilometres at a 80 km/h even when totally flat. And there are lots more projects in the pipeline, all with a common aim: to bring the past into the present and take it into the future.

The day when the winner of the first edition of the Premio Campiello Junior is announced is fast approaching – the ceremony will be on Friday, 6 May 2022 at 5.30 p.m. in the Big Hall at H-Farm in Roncade (Treviso).

As we wait to find out who the award-winning author will be, the Pirelli Foundation has conducted three interviews with the authors, who talk about how their stories and characters came to life and how important it is for them to be finalists in the first edition of this new literary contest.

The three interviews will be published on this page:

• Antonella Sbuelz, Questa notte non torno, Feltrinelli – Wednesday, 27 April 2022, 11.30 a.m.
• Guido Quarzo – Anna Vivarelli, La scatola dei sogni, Editoriale Scienza – Thursday, 28 April 2022, 11.30 a.m.
• Chiara Carminati, Un pinguino a Trieste, Bompiani – Friday, 29 April 2022, 11.30 a.m.

You can find out about all the Premio Campiello Junior events by visiting www.fondazionepirelli.org and www.premiocampiello.org.

Who knows whether the world really was made “to end up in a beautiful book” as believed by Stéphane Mallarmé. What’s true is that both life experience and literature alike emphasise the crucial role that narration plays in anyone’s existential dimension, so that we can easily identify with the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it” or of Umberto Eco, “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.”

Wandering between the lines of a book we encounter wisdom, pleasure, memories, and make discoveries. A melancholic thread that, from amongst the shadows of reminiscence and the sorrow of absence, drives us to create images and words that can fill that emptiness, while a cheerful wind ruffles ordinary thoughts and sets life in motion once more. Words have wings, yet they’re as hard as rocks, too. Words inspire thoughts and emotions to take flight, and experiences to take root. Words reveal the substance of things and open up worlds that, before they were put into words, did not exist. Narration is a journey and each journey fosters narration.

Words, essentially, are a very serious game, just like children’s play, and, indeed, we must teach children, sparing no effort and as soon as possible, about the prolific beauty that lies in reading and as such in imagining, discovering, planning – namely, narrating and living.

This is the frame of reference that led to the creation of the Campiello Junior Literary Prize, with the support of the Campiello Foundation and the Pirelli Foundation, an award dedicated to the recognition of authors of children’s books for ages 10 to 14 years, and whose first edition has just concluded. The three runners-up (Chiara Carminati with Un pinguino a Trieste (A penguin in Trieste), published by Bompiani; Guido Quarzo and Anna Vivarelli with La scatola dei sogni (The dream box), published by EditorialeScienza; and Antonella Sbuelz with Questa notte non torno (I’m not going back tonight), published by Feltrinelli), were selected by a jury chaired by Roberto Piumini and then voted upon by a panel comprising 160 very young readers (as per the Campiello Prize’s rules). The award ceremony takes place on 6 May, at the H-Farm Campus in Roncade (Treviso).

The aim of the initiative is best summarised by Roberto Piumini himself: “Those who write for children, who publish children’s books, who promote or reward children’s literature, achieve something that’s much more complex, praiseworthy and even riskier than in other kinds of writing, publishing and promotion, because they’re not attempting to convey existential, cultural or emotional concepts that readers will remember and that will become part of their literary taste; rather, they’re teaching children to express themselves, to learn a cognitive and emotional language, their own language, in the most substantial yet delicate anthropological sense.”

Piumini reiterates that, “Writing, publishing, promoting children’s fiction means providing ways to learn, feel, establish one’s identity, develop one’s imagination and purpose. This is not achieved, as in past literary works, through illustrative examples and role models, or through wise yet threatening admonitions, but through a rich, playful language that, with creativity and dynamism, invites children to enjoy variety and all that the world has to offer.”

Enrico Carraro, president of the Campiello Prize and of Confindustria Veneto, explains that, “Together with the Pirelli Foundation, we have established this prize to promote, once more, literary talent, and to propagate reading among children. This is a new project that reaffirms the commitment of Veneto entrepreneurs towards cultural activities and, as such, the development of the country.”

And, adds the Pirelli Foundation, “we support the Campiello Junior Literary Prize in order to stimulate the writing of children’s books, which are tools to enhance the pleasures of discovery, knowledge, quality of life. And it’s one more initiative, among the many we launched throughout our history, aimed at enhancing company libraries, the dissemination of culture, the nurturing of a ‘book culture’ as a crucial part of responsible citizenship from an early age.”

Here’s the underlying key cultural message: books are essential tools for the acquisition of knowledge and responsibility, for social, individual and human development, for building conscious relationships with the communities in which children grow up and reach adulthood. Reading blends pleasure with the shaping of one’s critical nature as, indeed, playing with the written word stimulates discussion, dialogue, appreciation of others, awareness of the value of individuality and diversity. The adventures narrated in books can enrich young readers’ experience from an early age, while the heroines and heroes of those stories make our lives more prolific, teaching us to use our imagination, build and explore new worlds.

Books are the foundations of a more open, welcoming and civilised “human city” and libraries are like stores of experiences, projects, dreams – stores preserving the staples of a good diet for body and soul, nourishing a better future.

“The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.” writes Marguerite Yourcenar in her seminal book Memorie di Adriano (Memoirs of Hadrian) (a quote also found written on the inside pediment at the entry of the Pirelli Library in the Bicocca neighbourhood in Milan). A ‘winter of the spirit’ is a recurring threat and, at certain times – just like the ones we’re experiencing now – a particularly troubling one. Yet, playing with the written word, together with our children, does help to build and pass on hope, in spite of everything.

The moment has come for the winner of the first edition of the Premio Campiello Junior to be announced. The 160 young people who form the Jury of Readers will now be able to express their opinions, which will be decisive for selecting the book that will be awarded the new accolade.

The winner will be announced today, 6 May 2022 at 5.30 p.m. in the Big Hall at H-Farm in Roncade (Treviso). The three finalists in the running are:

• Chiara Carminati, Un pinguino a Trieste, Bompiani
• Guido Quarzo – Anna Vivarelli, La scatola dei sogni, Editoriale Scienza
• Antonella Sbuelz, Questa notte non torno, Feltrinelli

The event will be presented by Federico Russo with the participation of Virginia Stagni. The authors and some members of the Selection Jury of the Award – chaired by Roberto Piumini and consisting of Chiara Lagani, Martino Negri, Michela Possamai and David Tolin – will talk with the children directly, telling them about their own passion for books and reading.

You can follow the live-streamed event here.

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

The transformation affecting corporate organisations and production modes is paving the way for new operational models yet to be fully understood

A new hybrid balance between home and office, possibly resting on terms considered “naturally” better and more useful to any situation, from the most traditional to the newest one, extensively experienced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – this is one of the most effective and, above all, positive accounts describing what has been happening within a large part of the production system in Italy (and elsewhere). And it is precisely such a theme that Francesca Manili Pessina and Francesco Rotondi discuss in Il lavoro ibrido (Hybrid working), a recently published book that deals, in an unusual yet very readable style, with the issues concerning the way in which working modes have changed after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Written like a story, but with the reliability of an accurate essay, this book fully draws on the two authors’ experience: Francesca Manili Pessina has been the Executive Vice President Human Resources, Organisation & Facility Management at Sky Italia since 2013, while Francesco Rotondi is Founding Member and Managing Partner LabLaw at the Studio Legale Rotondi & Partners law firm, as well as an employment solicitor holding a professorship at the LIUC – Università Carlo Cattaneo of Castellanza. Both Manili Pessina and Rotondi examine the much-talked-about “new normal”, whose meaning is encapsulated in the notion of “hybrid working”.

An occurrence, it should be emphasised, which the authors attribute to the natural evolution of working conditions, and then subsequently accentuated by the pandemic. In other words, they explain, the exceptional circumstances brought on by the pandemic have accelerated the pace of several different underlying trends that where already there.
An important aspect highlighted by the two authors is that this new hybrid condition will have a significant impact on customs and practices, organisational models, relationships, leadership, social processes, and so on.

The book, just under 100 pages long, can be easily read in one sitting and begins by exploring in depth the social dimension of smart working in connection to the human relationships existing within a company, before moving on to analyse hybrid working, understood as the result of conciliating virtual and in-person work. The book then goes on to tackle some more specific elements of this novel way to organise work, such as its spaces, the nature and role of leadership, the necessarily new mindset it requires, and its contractual and international aspects.

The book’s conclusion about the impact of COVID-19 is stated in its very first pages: “At the end of this extraordinary and episodic phase, which has accelerated the pace of things in general, we are nonetheless still only attempting to understand what this pandemic will really leave behind.” This work by Francesca Manili Pessina and Francesco Rotondi definitely makes for compelling reading.

Il lavoro ibrido (Hybrid working)

Francesca Manili Pessina, Francesco Rotondi

Franco Angeli, 2022

A thesis discussed at the University of Padua skilfully outlines a complex and constantly evolving topic

“Remote” working, smart working, working “from home” – different names aside, the change brought on by the spread of COVID-19 and that has been affecting work organisation in offices and, above all, in companies, is increasingly becoming a driver for transformation, as well as a simple solution to overcome adverse conditions. This is the dual nature of smart working, which is precisely what Speranta Bocan discusses and encapsulates in her research work entitled Smart working al tempo del Covid-19: opportunità o necessità? (Smart working in the times of COVID-19: opportunity or necessity?), a thesis discussed at the University of Padua, M. Fanno Department of Economics and Business Studies, Degree in Economics.

The research begins by situating current occurrences within the wider history of the industrial revolution. As we read in the introduction, the “fourth industrial revolution is affecting the most advanced societies and has radically changed our way of living, and especially our way of working. Its impact on the latter is even more disruptive than on the former, due to at least two reasons: the pervasiveness of internet connectivity in the life of people and organisations, which, as a consequence, incessantly extends into our individual and collective space and time, and the unprecedented speed with which this revolution is unfolding.” All this, according to Speranta Bocan, is intensified “by the development of the so-called ‘platform economy’, which has arisen to facilitate contact, exchange and collaboration between people through practices and models based on digital technologies and which, as such, is increasingly transforming the way in which we organise work, with intangible entities – platforms – gradually replacing traditional corporate organisations as job providers.” This is the technical background and cultural baggage informing the way in which the industrial world has tackled, in most cases, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once clarified the concept of flexible work, both pre- and post-pandemic, the research goes on to examine the different possible organisational strategies implemented by companies in order to pinpoint the potential of production organisations, also taking risks and advantages into consideration. Thus, Bocan attempts to determine whether smart working should be understood more as an opportunity or a necessity within the framework of overall change affecting production culture itself.

The research concludes that, “Although evidence on what may happen in the future is still scarce, it nonetheless seems to suggest that more flexible working modes are associated with greater labour input, higher productivity and increased employee well-being” and, further, “Once countered the risks concerning work-life balance, isolation and the weakening of relationships, as well as other previously mentioned hazards, flexible working could come to represent a positive evolution within the work sphere.”

Speranta Bocan’s thesis unquestionably succeeds in providing an accurate description of the aspects inherent in a complex and constantly evolving issue that is transforming corporate culture.

Smart working al tempo del Covid-19: opportunità o necessità? (Smart working in the times of COVID-19: opportunity or necessity?)

Speranta Bocan

Thesis, University of Padua, M. Fanno Department of Economics and Business Studies Degree in Economics, 2021-2022

The Gara Nazionale di Chimica – the national chemistry contest organised by the Ministry of Education, which has been held since 2002 – is coming to Milan for the first time. The event is reserved for the best fourth-year students at technical institutes specialising in chemistry and it is hosted by the school attended by the winner of the previous edition. The competition was won in 2021 by a young chemist from the Istituto Tecnico Tecnologico Ettore Molinari of Milan, which will therefore have the honour of organising this 20th edition, which will be held on 17 and 18 May 2022.

The Pirelli Foundation, which always strives to promote scientific culture and to make known the company’s constant commitment to research into innovative materials, will be a partner in this event.

While the students tackle the tests, the accompanying teachers will have an opportunity to visit the Pirelli Foundation, which is home to the company’s Historical Archive, where the exhibition Pirelli: When History Builds the Future is currently running. The guided tour will then continue in the chemistry laboratories of the company’s Research and Development Centre. Here experimentation focuses on raw materials from renewable and recycled sources: from natural rubber to silica derived from rice husk ash, to lignin and plasticizers and oils of vegetable origin, through to recycled materials obtained from end-of-life tyres.

This will show the visitors the leading role that, over the decades, Pirelli has played, and still very much plays today, in the scientific and technical development of processes and products.

A century and a half of innovation, technology, and experimentation. 150 years of business to celebrate in the new Foundation exhibition Pirelli: When History Builds the Future.

Throughout its long history, Pirelli has always focused on constantly developing cutting-edge technologies for high-performance products, particularly in the field of sports racing. “From track to road” is indeed the concept illustrated by the multimedia environment that welcomes the visitor at the beginning of the show, offering a close-up look at the technology behind the engineering design, from the first technical drawings to the virtualisation of the tyre. By pushing tyres to the limit and seeing how they respond to extreme conditions, Pirelli’s Research and Development department works to ensure that its processes, performance and products always stay ahead of the game in terms of safety and sustainability.

“I know it’s taken years and years of stratagems and observations, conjectures and checks, and I know that the most delicate instruments of calculation have been called in to help draft a proper rule and code of conduct. Nature does not fabricate tyres the way it fabricates eggs and mollusc shells.” These words by Leonardo Sinisgalli, the engineer-poet who spent four years at the helm of Pirelli magazine, stand out in the new exhibition space of the Historical Archive, which is indeed devoted to research and experimentation. This is where the technical documentation relating to the design and development of products and machinery is preserved. Original mould designs, tread studies, technical test specifications, and price lists and catalogues. A heritage that is not just technological, but also cultural.

At Pirelli, research in the field of science and new technologies has always been accompanied by a future-oriented approach to communication. The company has always embraced a corporate culture that combines technology and artistic experimentation, and the promotion of talent and internationalism. Through its long-term partnerships with artists, designers, intellectuals and writers, Pirelli has always helped further the development of an all-embracing multidisciplinary culture, giving it space in its house organs, in the photo shoots of great photographers, and in global advertising campaigns that have made the history of visual communication. The director of the advertising department, Arrigo Castellani, pointed this out back in the 1960s: “Our work is extremely varied and it brings us into contact with artists, writers, architects, and journalists: people who are exceptional, to say the least, sometimes a bit strange, but always fascinating.”

In the Open Space, an exhibition hall on the first floor, a multimedia timeline tells the story of the company and of the great innovations it has brought about, influencing both Italian and international history. The site-specific Inner Future installation, the photo shoot and the video Shapes, Patterns, Movements and Colors illustrate the world of rubber from raw material to finished product, a “round black object” that seems never to change and yet that contains a whole world in transformation. A future that is already here today.

Graphic and Exhibition Design: Leftloft

“Shapes, Patterns, Movements and Colors”, photos and videos: Carlo Furgeri Gilbert

Multimedial environments “When History Builds the Future” and “Inner Future”: NEO narrative environment operas