How was the Festival

Saying how a festival came into being – this festival – is difficult. For me, it’s something bordering on the limits of false modesty with a touch of conceit. But let’s try.
The Ferrara Buskers Festival was born in 1987, after an apprenticeship of almost 3 years spent making journeys abroad and scribbling notes on scraps of paper in my workshop in Via Montebello, under the shadow of the Santo Spirito church in Ferrara’s old city centre.

Yes, a blacksmith’s workshop, where I, my grandfather and father before me worked wrought iron with consummate skill. Objectively speaking, it was an unlikely kind of place for the birth of schemes and plans labelled as cultural and yet, strangely enough, in a fascinating way, it was ideal for the forging of artistic ideas, far removed from anything to do with iron and steel, but physically and poetically suited for meetings with friends and artists. Something like – if I may be so bold – a little, home-grown City Lights book shop.
It is with emotion and affection that I remember one grey November evening, in 1986, when, to my ineffable surprise, who should walk into the workshop but Mauro Malavasi together with the great Lucio Dalla. A meeting that began with the sounding of different hammers on the anvil and the earnest, skilful search for different tones, and ended with me telling Lucio about an idea for a street musicians’ festival that had been in my mind for a long time and, in return, being encouraged to go ahead with something we were both tuned in to.
And that’s what I, and we, did.
Stefano Bottoni