Farm Cultural Park – Favara, Sicily

Take a wealthy man and his wife bound by their passion for contemporary social art and life, and put them in Favara, their small native town close to the greek temple city of Agrigento in Sicily, and you obtain one of the places that makes the world different. A vision becomes reality in the crumbling decadent neighborhood known as the “sette cortili” (seven courtyards), built up on the old layout of an arabic Kasba in the center of Favara. It becames a wonderful and innovative place attracting contemporary art enthusiasts and numerous tourists from all over the world. Walking along the seven courtyards, huddled with white painted and cheerfully decorated small buildings, one feels as pulled from one dimension to the other, from a vintage shop to a tiny biological garden amid the buildings, from a video art exhibition to a innovative design room just behind the corner.

You should be only curious enough to discover all the surprises hidden in the several show rooms open on the narrow streets where once women used to chat about each other private businesses and gossip on other’s affairs (a sort of antique social network).

Absolutely worth is to dedicate a reasonable amount of time to visit one of the toilets, especially the one where the Stanford University speech of Steve Jobs is thrown on the wall just in front of the w.c., for the benefit of your 10m motivational growth. You can recognize it by the quote “stay hungry, stay foolish” printed on the entrance wall.

The Farm Cultural Park is an initiative to focus everyone’s attention on the importance of social art to support the rebirth of towns too small and to still to survive the financial and moral value crisis of these years. It should be taken as an example for all the other several places that only wait to be exploited and led to a creative way to live the present making the future better than even imagined.

As displayed on the home page of the cultural park, this is simply “a place that makes you happy” so be happy and enjoy the Foot Ontheway tribute to the Farm Cultural Park of Favara, a corner of better world.