Translate cultural identity into meaningful souvenirs

Souvenirs reproduce (and sometimes recreate) elements of history and culture. As promotional items, they are bought and circulated by visitors as samples of local memory, though rarely do they speak to the cities’ contemporary and everyday life. The result is the diffusion of a distorted image of a place – one with which the locals themselves are often unfamiliar.
This workshop consists in an exercise to reflect and prototype critical statements about the way a place is materialized into a souvenir, while making new souvenirs proposals for Lecce, which carry its culture, identity, but also its energy and spirit. The participants were asked to explore the genius loci and their feelings for the city: what makes them stay, what do you get from living here, what’s unique in this place that you would like to send to others? After research and discussion came the question: how to materialize/synthesise this in one object?