‘Farm Cultural Park’ involves several buildings that host contemporary art exhibitions and workshops
“We were tired of always having to go to places like New York or London to see anything interesting. We wanted to find a way to transform and improve the area we were living in, for ourselves but also our kids.” This is the motive with which Florinda Saieva and her husband Andrea Bartoli turned a conspicuous part of Favara’s town center into the ‘Farm Cultural Park’, a unique neighborhood devoted to art. Their brainchild gave the town, close to the Valley of Temples in the province of Agrigento, a new life through art.
Favara used to be an impoverished, run-down town with one of Italy’s highest unemployment rates. After renovating the building they had bought, Saieva and Bartoli created a scattered cultural center. An independent and modern center with strong attention to contemporary art and innovation. The Farm has become a hub for exhibitions by international and local artists. It houses a gallery of thought-provoking, often politically charged, artwork, along with shops, bars and cafes, cultural events, talks, screenings, workshops, and shows going on throughout the year.
The walls of the buildings acquired by the couple serve as giant canvases for paintings and sculptures.
The courtyards are full of practical installations like plant-pot chairs and brick fountains. And the 13th-century Castello dei Chiaramonte hosts art workshops. Everything is beautifully designed, with pervasive innovative energy. Today, the elderly citizens, who had clung to their homes in the semi-abandoned town center, now live amongst exhibition spaces that attract artists and tourists from all over the world.