ItaliaFestival - Village Regeneration and Festival

A festival that tells the story of village regeneration

The Village Regeneration and Festival is the event through which ItaliaFestival brings to Sessa Cilento, a small municipality in the province of Salerno in Campania, a collective reflection on a theme affecting much of Italy's interior: how culture can become a true economic engine in marginalized territories hit by depopulation. This is not a closed conference for experts: the format alternates forums and debates with performances, concerts, and electronic sets, based on the idea that the regeneration of villages must also be told through artistic languages.

The event is spread over three days, between the Municipal Council Hall of Sessa Cilento and the San Mango Amphitheatre, the hamlet that hosts the evening outdoor events. Admission is free for all events, including forums and concerts.

National forums and case studies from across Italy

The core of the festival is a series of forums dedicated to the network of festivals in inland areas at risk of depopulation. Each meeting starts from a real case study, chosen to represent a different cultural geography of the country:

• North — the experience of Oriente Occidente in Rovereto, to reflect on culture and creative enterprise in marginalized territories;
• South — the Time in Jazz festival in Sardinia, as an example of social innovation and new cultural economies in the Mezzogiorno;
• Center — the Appennino Festival in the Piacenza area, focusing on the intersection of community, landscape, and cultural identity.

Artistic directors, scholars, cultural operators, and local administrators sit around the tables, called to compare models and practices capable of generating value through culture, innovation, participation, and cohesion.

Music at the San Mango Amphitheatre

The evenings move to the San Mango Amphitheatre, where the festival offers a deliberately heterogeneous musical program. It ranges from the performance of Giuseppe Moffa with Lorenzo Mastrogiuseppe to the Rebirth electronic set by Simone Bosco, and the concert of Neapolitan singer-songwriter Gnut together with Alessandro D'Alessandro, one of the most recognizable voices of the new Campanian songwriting scene. Alongside the music, there are performance moments and book presentations, such as the essay Z Gen. Teorie e modelli di un racconto generazionale by Alfonso Amendola.

The “Il Borgo dei Mulini” project and PNRR funds

The festival does not stand alone: it is the most visible stage of the “Il Borgo dei Mulini” project, the cultural and productive regeneration initiative promoted by the Municipality of Sessa Cilento and funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU as part of Investment 2.1 “Attractiveness of historic villages” of the PNRR M1C3, promoted by the Ministry of Culture. The project works on the restoration of the ancient water mills of the Valle dei Mulini and Cilento grains, with a program that includes Mediterranean cooking masterclasses, summer schools on agriculture and community, workshops on traditional crafts, and nature walks throughout the year.

Sessa Cilento, a village within the National Park

Sessa Cilento is located in the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, a few kilometers from the Tyrrhenian coast of the Salerno area and the Living Museum of the Mediterranean Diet in Pioppi. It is a territory of cultivated hills, stone mills, and scattered hamlets — San Mango among them — where the issue of depopulation is not an abstract theme but a daily reality. This is precisely why the choice of ItaliaFestival, the association that brings together dozens of Italian festivals, to hold its forums here takes on a symbolic value: discussing inland areas from within, rather than talking about them from afar.

Why it's worth visiting

Those arriving in Sessa Cilento during the festival days will find an unusual format: in the morning, cultural policies are discussed with national-level speakers; in the evening, music is enjoyed in an open-air amphitheater overlooking the Cilento hills. Everything is free, in a village where distances are covered on foot and the audience is composed of both professionals and residents. It is the perfect opportunity to combine a visit to inland Cilento — less frequented than Paestum and the coast — with three evenings of live music.