Biblioteca Nuova Piazza del Sapere

The Municipality of Pieve Santo Stefano and local associations are working in partnership to make the Pieve Santo Stefano Municipal Library more appealing to young people, by adapting its spaces and offering educational activities that respond to their interests — and above all by applying methodologies aimed at building knowledge through the experiential, hands-on approach that is characteristic of workshop-based learning.

The Nuova Piazza del Sapere Library in Pieve Santo Stefano is being transformed into a vibrant centre of learning and creativity through a collaborative partnership between the Municipality and local associations.

The Municipality’s primary partner is the LIBRIFATTIAMANO social promotion association, based in Pieve Santo Stefano. Since 2014, this association has been actively managing the children’s and young adults’ section of the municipal library, and carries out an ongoing programme of exchange between the library and teachers, offering an annual programme of activities centred on illustration, writing and bookmaking workshops, which has drawn a great number of young visitors to the library.

The LIBRI FATTI A MANO Association also carries out the following activities:

Teacher training, aimed at promoting reading, creative writing and the making of handcrafted books, understood both as artistic objects and as educational pathways.
Social education projects, with targeted interventions in classes facing particular situations of hardship. These projects are workshop-based programmes developed on a case-by-case basis according to the issues at hand, and always involve students in hands-on activities guided by the cooperative learning method.
Meetings with authors and publishers of children’s and young adult books.
Fundraising for the purchase of books to be donated to local schools.
Annual organisation of the LIBRIFATTIAMANO festival.
Production of travelling exhibitions drawing on a collection of handmade books built up over many years of activity.
Meetings with parents and grandparents to promote the “shared book” method developed by British researchers Lynne Murray and Peter Cooper — a method that encourages children aged 0 to 3 to engage with books.

From books to hands-on experience

Explore the images that capture the vibrant and creative atmosphere of the Nuova Piazza del Sapere Library during activities organised by the Libri Fatti a Mano Association.

A place to experience positive socialisation, develop manual skills, promote civic coexistence, intergenerational solidarity, and explore themes related to global citizenship and environmental sustainability.

The project’s other partners are the PRO LOCO of Pieve Santo Stefano, VOLLEY REVOLUTION — a young and dynamic association that develops recreational and sporting activities for the very young — and the GRUPPO STORICO PALIO DEI LUMI APS, which for over 50 years has been organising a historical re-enactment linked to Pieve’s most important and ancient celebration: the Festa della Madonna dei Lumi (Festival of Our Lady of Lights).

The project’s main objective is to create within the library an inclusive, free-of-charge workshop space dedicated to the arts, communication techniques and traditional crafts, where both theory and practice revolve around the book as a creative synthesis of word and image, of stories and narratives, of manual skill and technical knowledge. A place where people with disabilities can also find opportunities to take part in recreational activities that meet their educational and social needs.

The project also aims to reveal the great possibilities offered by dialogue — as a means of exploring a theme in depth, of developing listening and attention skills, of practising true democracy and of building that authentic knowledge which is the fruit of shared enquiry.

In order to make the library a “new square of knowledge” — as Antonella Agnoli describes it in her book “Le piazze del sapere: Biblioteche e libertà” (Squares of Knowledge: Libraries and Freedom) — great care will be taken with the arrangement of the space, with all the adjustments needed to make it functional for each activity: movable shelving, accessible books, tools to turn the library into a workshop, and an opening towards the outside, towards outdoor spaces — so important because they encourage relationships and a sense of community.

Per maggiori informazioni

A place in which to experience and live a positive form of socialisation that fosters personal development, manual skills, civic coexistence and intergenerational solidarity — where themes related to global citizenship and environmental sustainability can be explored and deepened, in order to cultivate a genuine ecological awareness.

Biblioteca Comunale di Pieve Santo Stefano

Viale Michelangelo Buonarroti 9,
Pieve Santo Stefano, Italy
Tel. 075 797398

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