ESSERI URBANI develops along with the territory and for the territory. Likewise, it is also a challenge. The Apulian territory, which has peculiar features and anchors its identity to an invaluable tangible and intangible heritage, requires a proper strategy of protection and development, whose aim is to avoid speculative dynamics and to place it at the centre of a long-term project to enhance and promote its resources.

ESSERI URBANI chooses art as an instrument to read and interpret the current events and the modern world. Art can build bridges and new synergies, it can connect places, ideas, and people. Through art, ESSERI URBANI intends to be present on the territory, to support its development and innovation, and to redeem it both from a state of neglect and commodification, while triggering a process of urban and social regeneration both in places and practices.

Mandatory requirements of this projects are the strengthening of the local circuits and their integration in the touristic and accommodation offering, the promotion of the artistic culture through the planning of activities and events, the building of a stable and long-lasting network among the different subjects on the territory (with a special focus on access to culture, social inclusivity, and youth employment). This can be perceived also as a challenge: the main aim is to change the environmental and cultural heritage into an engine of sustainable self-growth.

The project finds its full expression during the Summertime through the Festival: born in 2019, ESSERI URBANI is the first Contemporary Art and Design Festival in Southern Italy to be fully inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities.

First of all, ESSERI URBANI is a chance to carry out an intense experimental research in the artistic field, by which communities, landscapes and local architectures meet the contemporary artistic languages. ESSERI URBANI challenges the curatorship practice and the artistic experience, suggesting a tangible intervention in the public space of our cities in order to read, interpret and rewrite its shape, identities and purposes. When placed in the multiform and dynamic city pattern, the artwork transforms the urban space in a place of encounter instead of mere passage. From this direct comparison, an open-air exhibition itinerary comes to life thanks to the artwork’s ability to communicate with spaces and architectures. Art insinuates itself in the urban pattern and outlines new maps and paths, and it makes us rediscover the space of everyday life and its potential. Outside galleries and museums, the artwork transforms itself: it can’t count on a container which defines and ensures its artistical status anymore, and it should adapt to a new environment, change its language, and evolve into a new form as if it were a living being. This new form is ESSERI URBANI.

The festival has been introduced during the Conferenza internazionale dei Borghi più belli del Mediterraneo and BIT Milano 2020, among the most important cultural activities by the Municipality of Locorotondo (where the first edition of the festival took place in 2019). The festival has been highlighted by Regione Puglia, as part of “TOURISM4ALL - Sviluppo di una rete transfrontaliera per la promozione di destinazioni turistiche accessibili”, financed by CBC Interreg VA Italia-Croazia 2014-2020. The 2019 edition has beenawarded “Menzione speciale Under 35” as part of Premio Cultura+Impresa 2019-2020 promoted by Federculture and The Round Table - in partnership with Fondazione Italiana Accenture e ALES -   in “Sponsorizzazione e Partnership culturale”. ESSERI URBANI is among the twenty winners of the New European Bauhaus Prizes, in the category “Mobilisation of culture, arts and communities”, and it is the only Italian project in the category “Award”.