Education Festival

The Education Festival in Monopoli

The Education Festival was born in Monopoli, a coastal city in the province of Bari, as a new space for collective reflection on the theme of education as a common good and shared responsibility. Promoted by the Municipality of Monopoli through the Department of Public Education, the festival serves as a moment for meeting and discussion to read the present together and imagine the future for younger generations, in a context where the vulnerabilities of childhood and adolescence require community-based responses.

Three days of lectures, theater, and workshops

The event spans three intense days, from morning to evening, held across two iconic city venues: the Teatro Radar, on Via Magenta, which hosts in-depth discussions and evening performances, and the Biblioteca Prospero Rendella, which hosts workshops and a documentary exhibition. Each day alternates between sessions designed for local schools in the morning and evening meetings open to the general public.

Voices and protagonists

The program brings together nationally renowned pedagogists, psychologists, science communicators, and teachers. Guests include professor and communicator Vincenzo Schettini, pedagogist Lorenzo Braina, psychologist Giuseppe Lavenia (an expert in digital addiction), university professor Chiara Scardicchio, and criminologist Roberta Bruzzone, who address the challenges of educating today from various perspectives: the relationship with digital technology, adolescence, youth distress, and adult responsibility.

• Lectures and dialogues with experts on school, growth, and well-being
• Theatrical performances, including those by students from the Polo Liceale di Monopoli
• Training workshops for teachers on education in the digital age
• Documentary exhibition by the Municipal Historical Archive on rural schools

An exhibition on school memory

The Biblioteca Rendella hosts the documentary exhibition The Teacher in the Pre-Unification Era: Rural Schools 1920-1960, curated from the Municipal Historical Archive's collections: a journey that tells the history of education in the Monopoli area and restores the value of an often-forgotten educational memory.

A project for the community

More than just a simple event calendar, the Education Festival presents itself as a community response to the fragilities of the future, involving families, teachers, students, associations, and institutions across Puglia. The first edition, hosted in Monopoli in January 2026, lays the foundation for an event that the municipal administration intends to consolidate, with the goal of fostering a true shared culture of education in the region.