MOLFETTA ENTREPRENEURS ASSOCIATION

And following the Holy Week ceremonies in Apulia in 2012, the first regional network dedicated to the tourism and cultural planning of Puglia’s patron saint festivals was launched.. Thirty-two municipalities, from the Gargano to the Salento, born from a promise made between two hospital beds.

A shared set of guidelines, a pocket guide, a portal, the international trade fairs. It all started in San Giovanni Rotondo, in a room where I didn't expect to find an idea.

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 are there to confirm ideas, not to find them. You find the good ideas where you'd rather not be, in a hospital ward, on a bench after a procession, in a bar in Molfetta at ten at night. From a hospital room came a network of thirty-two municipalities. A good intuition, if you take it seriously, can become a project. One thing leads to another, always. The following year this brand would go on stage at Rome's JOSP Fest with SANCTA.

website > www.patronidipuglia.it

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

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

In 2008 I created a project to promote Apulia's religious rites, born from a question repeated at trade fairs. No commission, no regional office behind me.

When a "only Molfetta?" turns into a network of 22 municipalities. And then Spain arrives. In a few years it became a programme of the Apulia Region, with press conferences at BIT Milan, TTG Rimini, ITB Berlin, FESPO Zurich, a presence at the religious tourism fairs, coverage on RAI Radio2, Telenorba and Antenna Sud.

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

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

They asked me for a poster, I handed over a thirty thousand euro project. The first tourism promotion plan for Molfetta's Easter rites was born like this, without a single euro of public money.

A simple request from the Confraternita della Morte of Molfetta becomes the first tourism promotion plan for the town's rites. The following year, at the trade fairs, a question would start coming back that opened up everything else.

The request

One day the doctor Franco Stanzione, prior of the Confraternita della Morte, and the photographer Antonio D'Agostino walk into my office. The request is clear. "Gaetano, I want a beautiful poster for Holy Week in Molfetta." A few days pass. We meet again. They expect a layout. I lay two typewritten sheets on the table, a tourism promotion project for Molfetta's Holy Week, worth thirty thousand euro. The prior tells me straight away, with the honesty I always recognised in him, that the Confraternita can only contribute a small share. I already knew. But I had seen that potential, and I didn't want to leave it there.

A cultural project for a brotherhood, without public funds

The project could exist only if the local businesses held it up. I brought in eight of them, Remec, Cattolica Popolare, the Goccia di Sole olive oil mill, Top Service, Garden Hotel, Editrice L'Immagine, Rifindecor, ConfSud. Each put in a share. Together with the Confraternita's, it was enough. No public money, the town council had other things on its mind. It was, in fact, one of the first cases where I saw that turning a religious rite into a tourism offer doesn't necessarily need a public grant. It needs people who believe in their territory.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

> A concrete vision to share. A religious rite is already a tourism offer, you just have to treat it as one
> Deliver more than you were asked for. They asked me for a poster, I brought a project
> Hold the project up on local businesses when there is no public funding, eight companies, one share each
> Man the real flows. The stand at Bari-Palese Airport catches those arriving and those leaving
> Bilingual Italian and English materials, catalogue, portal and an info point open during the days of Holy Week
> I handled graphics, communication and the visual identity of the project

Where I took it

A space at BIT in Milan to present Molfetta and its rites to Italian and foreign operators. A stand at Bari-Palese Airport for two months. An info point at the Confraternita during the days of Holy Week. A bilingual catalogue and portal. Guided tours during the Easter period, along a route built around the city.

What I learned

The 2007 project lasted a single season. Not because it ended badly, because it became something else. The interest gathered in Milan and at Bari-Palese, and above all the question that kept coming back from visitors, "only Molfetta?", convinced me that the right scale was no longer the city, but the region. The following year the network of Holy Week in Apulia was born. I have no figures to show from that edition, at the time we didn't collect them, and it would be dishonest to invent them now. What I can say is that the interest was big enough to push a city project into becoming a regional one.

video  > https://youtu.be/-5y_m1diEjI

I convince nine entrepreneurs from the Molfetta industrial area to show up together at the Fiera del Levante in Bari. No public funding, each company puts in its share. When the fair ends, my office fills with flowers.

Nine companies from different sectors, one shared stand, an experiment with a start date and an end date. The visitor walks in for one and finds a territory.

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.

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

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".

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