#peripheries: Culture-led urban regeneration in Sicily: The story of Farm Cultural Park and Favara | Italy

culture360.ASEF.org is featuring a series of articles on the topic of #peripheries. The #peripheries have been regarded as being in the geographical margin, distant from the capital cities and cultural centres of countries. With an ongoing decentralisation trend, through this series of articles, we will look at various arts endeavours by artists, cultural professionals and art organisations who operate or occupy the peripheries in an urban society and the role that the arts play. In this article, Elena Lombardo looks at Farm Cultural Park, an independent cultural centre and laboratory of urban experimentation that changed the history of the Sicilian city of Favara.

Farm Cultural Park (FARM) was born between the abandoned walls of the “Seven Yards” in the historical centre of Favara, a Sicilian city in the Agrigento province, one of the most peripheral areas of southern Italy.

Abandoned buildings in the Seven Yards, Favara before the restoration in 2010. (Photo Credit: www.farmculturalpark.com)

It is the project of a visionary family, Andrea Bartoli and Florinda Saieva, on a mission to reimage their city and its future through the lenses of contemporary art, architecture and community building.

Everything started in 2010, when the founders began to restore and transform the crumbling courtyards in a next-generation cultural centre. These yards, once densely populated by farmers and miners, were gradually abandoned during the boom of the construction sector in the ‘60s/70s, for new and more modern houses outside the centre or to migrate abroad and north in search of better working opportunities.

At that time, the economic crisis that hit Italy in 2008 had strongly impacted on an already struggling city: after years of political instability and economic decline, the stagnant local economy, a high rate of unemployment and criminality, was causing once again a massive migration of young people to other cities, regions and countries. And the story was repeating itself.

For these reasons, despite its proximity to the famous touristic destination “La Valle dei Tempi” (The Valley of the Temples), an archaeological area included in 1997 in the UNESCO World Heritage List, for decades Favara was unable to intercept and attract the fluxes of tourists that were reaching the region every summer.

This must be the place: etymology of change

In such a difficult context, FARM was not designed to be a traditional cultural centre, but rather a “tool of change”, through which its founders hope to rebuild a sense of belonging, empowerment and possibilities, as mentioned by Florina Saieva, Cofounder of FARM. 

Rooted in a set of counter narratives, the regeneration of spaces was just the first step of a more complex process of reimagining the city and its future: “Cultural agency is a modest but relentless call to creative action, one step at the time" (Sommer, D. 2014, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities, Duke University Press.)

Despite the local scepticism, the vision of FARM developed with time, adapting art projects, public events, community gatherings and architectural interventions to the context’s challenges, ambitions and needs but always building around its key pillars and vision.

As mentioned by Andrea Bartoli, “We decided to come back and share everything we have: time, economic resources, passions, friends, networks and values. We had an immediate vision: that this forgotten, abandoned and humiliated place could become a centre for cultural production and social transformation." Andrea Bartoli mentions.