Calascio Innovation Playground

An innovation festival in the mountains of Abruzzo

The Calascio Innovation Playground is a festival dedicated to innovation, gaming, and village regeneration held in Calascio, a tiny municipality in the province of L'Aquila, Abruzzo, world-renowned for its Rocca, the highest medieval fortress in Italy. Conceived and organized by the Giffoni Innovation Hub in collaboration with the Municipality of Calascio, the event was born within the "Rocca Calascio – Luce d'Abruzzo" project, funded by the PNRR as part of the "Attractiveness of Villages" initiative.

Gaming, storytelling, and new technologies

At the heart of the event is the concept of transforming the village into a shared space for learning and experimentation. Activities combine methodologies of gamification, LARP (Live Action Role Playing), storytelling, and Open Innovation processes. Participants become protagonists of live role-playing games rooted in local history and landscape, moving between the village, the Rocca, and town spaces according to a collaboratively built narrative.

• Workshops on game design, worldbuilding, and immersive storytelling
• LARP experiences set in the Calascio territory
• Meetings on innovation, digital culture, and experiential tourism
• Activities open to students, young creatives, visitors, and enthusiasts

An international community of youth

Each edition draws hundreds of people to Calascio: high school students during the first days, followed by university students, under-35s, visitors, and curious onlookers on the weekend, with free and inclusive activities. The project has also involved international students from the Erasmus Student Network of L'Aquila, hailing from numerous countries, in creative residencies dedicated to the co-design of gaming experiences.

Why the Municipality of Calascio

The choice of Calascio is no coincidence: the village, with its few inhabitants and its Rocca—a symbol of inland Abruzzo—represents the ideal place to test a model of regeneration for inland areas that intertwines innovation and tradition. The stated goal is to make the town a symbol of a new concept of innovation, capable of attracting young people, businesses, and creative professionals, and projecting the community beyond its physical boundaries.

A growing event

Following its debut in October 2025, the Calascio Innovation Playground has established itself as one of the most original events in the Abruzzo cultural landscape, capable of uniting the thousand-year charm of the Rocca with the challenges of contemporary innovation, in a dialogue between past and future in the heart of the Abruzzo mountains.