There is an association in Venice that has made preserving artisan memory its mission. It’s called Maker Mile, a non-profit project founded and directed by Ilaria Marcatelli, which for years has worked quietly to keep the knowledge held in Venetian workshops from disappearing along with the people who practice it. On Saturday, September 26, that work returns to public view with the second edition of “Maker Tales – Gli Artigiani di Sestiere” (The Artisans of the Sestiere), running from 3:30 to 7:30 pm at La Casa di The Human Safety Net, in Piazza San Marco. To understand what Maker Tales is, one first has to understand what Maker Mile is. Not simply an organizer of cultural events, but an association with a precise mission: to reactivate artisan trades by putting them in dialogue with the present, from design to digitalization, from branding to video storytelling. Working closely with the local community — workshops, artisans, families who have passed down a craft for generations — Maker Mile is effectively building a living archive of Venetian artisanal techniques, while fostering synergies among professionals, students, institutions and businesses.
A live archive & event
It is within this framework that Maker Tales was born: not a standalone festival, but the narrative tool through which the association makes its research work public. The documentaries, the exhibitions, the face-to-face encounters with artisans are the visible tip of a method Maker Mile applies daily, well beyond September’s showcase. The timing is no coincidence: the event is part of the “On the Occasion of Homo Faber 2026” program, which accompanies the fourth edition of Homo Faber, the international exhibition dedicated to fine craftsmanship running at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini through September 30, enriched this year by the exhibition “Homo Faber: An Island of Light,” curated by Es Devlin. But while Homo Faber looks at fine craftsmanship on an international scale, Maker Mile brings the focus back to the smallest, everyday scale of the sestiere: the workshop around the corner, the artisan you know by name.
Five Faces, Five Crafts on show
The event opens at 3:30 pm with a direct encounter between the public and local artisans — an experience designed to be “dialogic and tactile” — before culminating at 6:00 pm in the screening of five documentaries directed by Chiara Becattini, with the narrative curated by Maker Mile itself. Featured artisans involved in this happenings are: Daniela Levera(ceramicist), Fernando Masone (paper artist), Marisa Convento (traditional glass-bead stringer), Riccardo Guaraldi (luthier) and Marino Menegazzo (gold beater). Five crafts that tell five different Venices: the patient, often invisible manual work that the association deliberately chooses to place at the center of the stage. After the screenings, the artisans themselves will speak directly with the audience in a discussion moderated by Ilaria Marcatelli and Susanna Pozzoli — confirming an approach that refuses any distance between those who tell the story and those who live the craft.
As Ilaria Marcatelli, Founder di Maker Mile declares: “The value of Maker Tales lies precisely in not ending with a single evening: the making of the documentaries — supported also by the Municipality of Venice — is conceived as the first step of a broader network of cultural and social-innovation projects, with the stated goal of continuing to tell the stories of, and give visibility to, other artisans who still lack recognition. In this sense, Maker Mile proves to be less an event organizer and more a custodian: of trades, of stories, and of an idea of Venice handed down through the hands that shape it”.
Free admission, subject to availability. Press contact: info@makermile.it | +39 333 990 9595 | www.makermile.it
