Unveiling the complexity of craftsmanship

Being a craftsman means having innate talents and skills (often taken for granted) that need to find a way to express themselves. It is a uniqueness that is often recognized only because of the manual labor involved, which is obviously a crucial aspect.

However, this runs the risk of overshadowing the complexity that runs through the biographies of each artisan, which are made up of passion, creativity, talent, and manual skills.

Seeking to grasp this complexity also allows us to address in greater depth the fundamental issue of how to support young people who, in whatever way, show signs of having a particular talent, and what are the most appropriate ways to pass on the necessary skills to young apprentices, avoiding the classic rhetoric of blaming the younger generations.

The meeting will present the results of research conducted by Fabio Gasparini, research fellow at the Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies (IRPPS) of the CNR, and Mattia Vitiello, research director at CNR-IRPPS as part of the PNRR project ‘Age-It: Ageing Well in an Ageing Society’.