HOLY WEEK IN MOLFETTA 2007

From Molfetta to twenty-two Apulian towns, five itineraries and a shared quality standard for the Easter rites. Concept by Gaetano Armenio, 2008.

"Beautiful, but only Molfetta? Is there nothing else in Apulia?" People asked me that at trade fairs dozens of times. In 2008 I started phoning mayors with no mandate at all. Ten said yes, then they became twenty-two.

The question I took seriously

At BIT in Milan, at the Molfetta info point, in the fair corridors, the scene was always the same. Tourists and pilgrims who had experienced the rites of Holy Week in Molfetta asked me: "Beautiful… but only Molfetta? Is there nothing else in Apulia?" Repeated dozens of times, that question was already an answer. The Apulia of Easter rites existed, from the Gargano to the Salento, but it moved in scattered order, each town on its own. No one told it as a single destination. In 2008 I started making phone calls. I had no commission. I had a list of towns and a conviction.

From 10 to 22 municipalities

First to join, 10 municipalities, from the Gargano to the Salento. Growth by word of mouth, in a few months they became 22. Then the institutional step. The regional councillor Guglielmo Minervini put me in touch with the tourism councillor Massimo Ostillio, and the project entered the programmes of the Apulia Region. Each municipality pays a membership fee, the proof that the network was not imposed from above but supported by the territories themselves.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

> A concrete vision to share. The Apulia of Easter rites is a single destination, not twenty scattered towns
> Field research, town by town, to understand who was ready to welcome visitors and who needed time
> A shared set of guidelines, minimum standards of welcome written with the municipalities, not for them
> Five itineraries, Gargano e Daunia, Puglia Imperiale, Bari e la Costa dei Trulli, Salento, Magna Grecia
> A membership fee for each municipality, whoever pays cares more about the project
> I handled graphics, communication, the multilingual pocket guide, the portal and the social channels

Ostern in Apulien, Apulia in Berlin

In 2013 the network crossed the Alps. To ITB in Berlin I brought the guide translated into German and the promotional material "Ostern in Apulien", because either you speak a market's own language or you do not speak to it at all. In the evening the appointment moved to the Philharmonie. Guides were handed out in the foyer while on stage the band of Ruvo di Puglia, led by maestro Pino Minafra, played with the vocal group Faraualla. Apulian funeral marches inside one of the best known concert halls in Europe. No leaflet would have achieved the same.

2018, Spain, Valladolid, the international opening

Ten years after the first phone calls, the project crossed a border. In 2018 a collaboration opened with Spain and with the University of Valladolid, a city that has an old relationship with Holy Week, different from ours but related at the roots. From that meeting came exchanges, comparisons of method and new working scenarios that brought the Apulian network to measure itself against an international context. It is the step that made one thing clear. When a project of place is built on listening, sooner or later someone from outside recognises it.

What I learned

A network of small and medium places can hold, if it is born from listening and not from a desk. A shared set of guidelines is worth more than twenty parallel public calls. A question repeated at a trade fair, if someone takes it seriously, can become the map of a region. And ten years on it can even become a bridge to another country.

website > www.settimanasantainpuglia.it

video > https://youtu.be/mFyxf_KhjRE?feature=shared

Nine companies from Molfetta's industrial area in a single stand at the Fiera del Levante, 2006. Self-funded. Naming and graphics by Gaetano Armenio.

"But we are different, we do different things." One at a time they said yes, each with a share of the cost and not a euro of public money. When the fair closed my office filled up with flowers.

The proposal

Molfetta industrial area, mid two thousands. Every company goes to the fair on its own, its own stand, its own clients, its own catalogue. It occurs to no one to show up together. I start going round the companies with a simple proposal, to share a space at the Fiera del Levante, Bari's international trade fair. Not a consortium, not a multi-year project. An experiment, let's see what happens if an industrial area presents itself as a single productive reality instead of nine separate stands. The initial reaction is the one you'd expect. Distrust, doubt, the usual "but we're different, we do different things". Then, one at a time, they say yes.

The nine companies

Nine realities from different sectors took up the proposal, all self-financed, Cattolica Popolare, Globeco, Gaudio, Giesse Impianti, Grossano Arredamenti, Inottica, Molfetta Outlet, Remec, Sitec. Each put in a share. No public call, no public contribution. Just entrepreneurs who decide to try.

The shared stand at the Fiera del Levante

NOVEMERCANTIinFIERA becomes a single stand at the Fiera del Levante in Bari, nine companies from the same industrial area presenting themselves as a network. The idea is that the visitor walks in for one and discovers the other eight.

The flowers

When the fair ends, before I even do the maths, my office fills with bouquets from the entrepreneurs. I didn't expect it. The commercial results had been good, the new contacts many, and everyone wanted to repeat the experience the following year. In the months after, requests to take part arrived from other companies in the industrial area who wanted to be there at the next edition. I never repeated it. The following year I was already inside the project of Holy Week in Molfetta and my energy had ended up there. But those flowers stayed the most concrete way I've seen to say "it worked".

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

> A concrete vision to share. That the Molfetta industrial area would stop being an address and become a name
> Door to door. A collective proposal is sold at single doors, not in an assembly
> Take complexity out of the proposal. Not a consortium, not a multi-year commitment, but an experiment with a start date and an end date
> Choose a naming that tells the project. NOVEMERCANTIinFIERA, nine merchants at the fair, says it all before the visitor even steps into the stand
> Self-financing as a rule. Whoever puts in their own money decides more seriously
> One stand, visually single. The visitor must perceive a place, not a sum of companies
> I handled graphics and communication for the project, from the visual identity of the stand to the promotional materials handed out at the fair

What I learned

A single edition. But for one week the Molfetta industrial area had a name at the Fiera del Levante, not just an address on a map. Nine different companies that together filled a space as if they had always been there. The visitor walked in for one and found a territory.

Video > https://youtu.be/y8lxI68qwZs

Patron Saints of Apulia, the first regional brand for patron saint festivals. Thirty-two municipalities from the Gargano to Salento, 2012. Conceived by Gaetano Armenio.

It all began in a hospital ward in San Giovanni Rotondo. ‘If we make it out of this room alive, come and see the “fujenti” of the Madonna del Soccorso,’ Nicola said to me. In May I was in San Severo, and from there a regional brand was born, encompassing thirty-two municipalities stretching from the Gargano to Salento, with a shared set of guidelines, a pocket guide, a website and international trade fairs.

The spark, the invitation you don't see coming

We were both in treatment. Him a liver tumour, me a pancreatic tumour. His name was Nicola, he was from San Severo, and in the long ward afternoons he talked about his patron saint festival the way you talk about the most important thing that has ever happened to you. One day he looks at me and says: "If we get out of this room alive, come and see the fujenti of the Madonna del Soccorso." The fujenti are the runners through the sparks. In May I keep the promise. I'm in San Severo, in front of them. Firecrackers, faith, people running through the sparks, an emotion few places in Italy can stage, and zero structured tourism promotion around it. Patron saint festivals in Apulia were a goldmine no one had yet treated as one.

From San Severo to the regional office in seven days

I went home with the video I had edited myself. My footage, my editing. I brought it to Silvia Godelli, the Apulia regional councillor for tourism, and watched it with her. In seven days we had a name, a logo and the political go-ahead to start. From that meeting Patroni di Puglia, the Feast, was born, the first regional brand dedicated to patron saint festivals as a product of tourism and cultural planning.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

> A concrete vision to share. Treat Apulian patron saint festivals as a structured tourism product, not as postcard folklore
> Bring a homemade video in front of the people who decide. Emotion arrives before the business plan
> Ask each municipality for a membership fee. Those who put in their own money care more about the project
> Write a shared set of guidelines and catalogue the festivals by type
> I handled graphics, communication and the visual identity of the brand

What remained

A recognisable brand, a network of municipalities that worked together for a few years, a catalogue of the festivals that before lived only in the heads of mayors and priors. Patroni di Puglia arrived after a precise path. It had started with Holy Week in Molfetta 2007, had widened into Holy Week in Apulia, and became regional here, in 2011, taking in the whole liturgical year. What did not remain is political continuity. When the regional governments change, certain projects fray. That's the physiology.

What I learned

Focus groups confirm ideas, they do not find them. I found this one in a hospital ward, and seven days later the video I had edited myself was on the regional tourism desk. What remained is a recognisable brand and a catalogue of the festivals that until then lived only in the heads of mayors and priors. What did not remain is political continuity, and that part was never mine to hold.

website > www.patronidipuglia.it

video > https://youtu.be/V2DQHvMzV5w?feature=shared

video > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTTU1XO00k

Nave Italia in Molfetta, the world's largest sailing brig and nine inclusion associations. Graphic design and communication by Gaetano Armenio.

Communicating the arrival of the largest working sail brigantine in the world in the harbour of my hometown. Three days, eight associations working on inclusion, a network of military and civil bodies to fit into a single image.

The problem comes before the celebration

The sheet was blank and everyone had to fit on it. The Italian Navy, the Tender To Nave Italia Foundation, the Harbour Master's Office, the Apulia Region and eight Molfetta associations that work every day with disability and hardship. Logos that carry weight, hierarchies that allow no slip-ups, an order that someone would read as a ranking anyway. They asked me to handle the communication of an event. The real part of the job was this: holding a network together without anyone feeling pushed into the background, and without turning a programme into an org chart.

The decision: the ship at the centre, the bodies around it

I built the visual identity around the ship, not around the institutions. In an official event that is a choice you have to defend, because acronyms usually win. The photograph of the brigantine fills the space, the logos sit where they belong without stealing the scene. This untied the knot of hierarchies. If the ship is at the centre, no body is first and none is last. They are all gathered around the same thing.

Four days, four audiences

Nave Italia does not carry passengers, it carries crews. It is a 61-metre sailing ship of the Tender To Nave Italia Foundation, the non-profit promoted by the Italian Navy and the Italian Yacht Club, and it hosts educational and rehabilitation projects for people with disabilities and psychological and social hardship. The sea and life on board are the tool, young people who for a few days become real sailors.

The programme had to read clearly for people looking for different things. The ship arrives on Saturday 27 June, welcomed by the Santa Cecilia Band of Molfetta. and the official welcome on board with the authorities and the start of activities with the associations. On Sunday 28 the visits open to the city, morning and afternoon. On Monday 29 it closes at the Auditorium of the Diocesan Museum with the Nave Italia Conversations, where Commander Matteo Malerba, neuropsychiatrist Tommaso Tota and Dr Gagliani of the Tender To Nave Italia Foundationexplain what it means to teach autonomy out at sea.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

> Visual identity built on the ship, to neutralise the problem of hierarchies between the bodies involved
> Coordinated graphics and communication, from the poster to the press materials
> A single visual system applied across four days with four different audiences
> The eight associations kept inside as protagonists, not as lines on a programme

What I learned

Handling the communication of an event wanted and organised by the cultural association Il Popolo Granchio of Molfetta (Bari) means finding the words for something that words risk betraying. A young person learning to trust the sea is not a moving story to sell.

It is a real achievement, and it has to be told with respect. The hardest part was not fitting five institutions onto one sheet. It was saying something delicate without making it weigh.

www.ilpopologranchio.it