Why Florence Creative City - Crafts & Folk Art
Florence has been a city where handicraft and creativity have played a pivotal role, both from an economic standpoint and in the socio-cultural fabric, already starting in the Middle Ages with its model of the artisan’s bottega as an innovation and a knowledge transmission center. Florence continues today to be one of the most creative cities in the world.
There isn’t a single main product sector: we can find leather, textiles, woodwork, ceramics, stones, metals and digital handicraft; important presence is that of the new makers; the number of the social companies is growing; while frequent are the interactions and fusions with other fields. Florence is one of the most entrepreneurial cities in Italy, with a special historical focus on the artisanal production with close to 30,000 companies operating in 2018 and a total of more 70,000 people employed; specifically the manufacturing companies are over 8,000 with almost 30,000 employed. The offering is rounded up by a large and widespread network of schools (more than 30, from secondary schools to Universities), museums (more than 70 that are active in the handicraft and the material culture), institutions, service and research structures, events.
The handicraft sectors
Florence, a creative and artisanal city:
it is its tradition
Over the centuries Florence has been expressing high levels of creativity in the various sectors and specifically in that of the artisanal productions. In the Middle Ages the productive capabilities were expressed in the Corporations of Arts and Crafts that will later be at the basis of the political government of the city and that have left their marks that are visible today. With the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Florence becomes a world example of creativity and know-how thanks to its Bottega Fiorentina model, the ideal place for the innovation of products and productions and the transmission of knowledge between masters and pupils.
The Medici and the Lorena families, between 1500s and 1800s, have guaranteed steady commissions of every day objects and artworks, with productive excellences known worldwide and widespread throughout the antiquarian culture.
During the 1900s the Florentine creativity expresses itself in the active participation to the experience of Futurism, in the first events of Italian fashion, in the experimentation of the Radical Architecture, the cradle of the New Italian Design.
