On 25 November, we received the last submissions for the LUCIA AWARD 2022.

In less than a month since the call for entries opened, around 60 audio production projects have arrived.

Let’s take a step back for a sec…. Every year since 2020, together with the Archivio dei diari, we have been selecting some diaries – or letters, manuscripts, memoirs – from the more than 10,000 records archived in Pieve Santo Stefano: unpublished private stories, writings of ordinary people in which everyone’s life and the history of Italy is reflected in various forms.

Diaries in hand, we invite audio makers, authors and anyone with some audio production know-how, to read their synopses and think about how they would turn them into stories to be listened to. The prize is in fact designed to support independent production and allows the awarded persons to work on a new project for the following 9 months, with two production grants of €2,500 and €1,000.

We have invited them to work around diaries that speak of bodies and their multiple and changing identities, their excesses, challenges and ruptures; of those bodies that are caught up in the folds of History – such as the First World War tormented and mutilated bodies Giuseppe Salvemini writes about; of those that have managed to rewrite their own story, like Tania Ferrucci – who speaks out loud about the long journey of transition and freedom of a woman born a boy – Thierno Sadou Sow and Seydi Rodriguez Gutierrez, who have gone beyond seas and borders to meet their dreams, or Valerio Daniel De Simoni, who left and never returned from an epic journey but who’s still affecting many other peoples’ lives.

These days the jury, including Natalia Cangi, Tiziano Bonini, Maddalena Fossombroni and Pietro Torrigiani of Libreria Todo Modo and Carolina Valencia Caicedo, met.

It is with pleasure that we announce the names of the finalists for the LUCIA PRIZE 2022:

Silvia Baldetti + Camilla Maino, Chiara D’Ambros, Roberta D’Angelo + Ivana Marrone + Paola Moretti, Collettivo Metadiapason, Doremind, I Franchi, Riccardo Martorana, Michele Orvieti + Radio Alta Frequenza, Maria Pecchioli and Perla Sardella.

On 11 December at 18.00 we will announce who will be taking home glory and money!