On Saturday, December 20, the new “Local Hub” will be inaugurated in Tirano, a space rethought and redesigned thanks to funding obtained from Regione Lombardia through the Cultura 2025 call for the project “Local Hub. Towards an Open Library in Tirano” and from the Province of Sondrio, as part of the interventions aimed at renovating libraries funded with resources from the Framework Agreement for Territorial Development.

Fifty years after the opening of the civic library “Paolo e Paola Maria Arcari,” another significant step is being taken towards the demands of contemporary society, through the creation of a new library-community center based on sociality, participation, and social, cultural, and technological innovation.

The new space will offer complementary services to the Arcari library, serving as a hub for the community, a center for direct citizen engagement, with particular attention to the development of services aimed at youth aged 14-35.

In the afternoon of Saturday, December 20, starting at 3:00 PM, the Local Hub will be opened to the community, to get to know the new spaces and services, with a particular invitation to young people, who will be able to entertain themselves playing video games or board games proposed by the association Ludorama.

At 3:30 PM, the 50th anniversary of the Arcari Library will be celebrated. Institutional greetings will be followed by a presentation by the Library and Culture Service titled “From the Casa Grana-Pievani to the Local Hub,” briefly retracing the evolution of the Tirano library.

Following this, there will be a refreshment provided by the Intrecci Social Cooperative.

Located on the first floor of Palazzo Foppoli, the center is inspired by libraries in Northern Europe, which the librarians were able to learn about thanks to the Erasmus+ project, coordinated by the Equilibri cooperative from Modena, which the Province of Sondrio joined: open, shared, co-designed social spaces, work-in-progress thought laboratories and experimentation of practices that allow the creative force of the community to come to life.

The project builds on a previous experimental path that led last year to a co-design carried out thanks to the “Fare insieme” initiative, promoted by the Province of Sondrio in libraries and museums, during which the proposals, desires, and needs of young people emerged. From this path, the idea of developing the Local Hub space as an innovative library, serving the community and particularly the youth, was born, with a perspective of a Tirano Open Library.

Interventions included the setup of a multifunctional room, flexible for diverse uses, with an area for video games and board games and an area for creative laboratories; a relaxation room with a kitchen space for organizing workshops, convivial moments, and to host high school students during lunch breaks; a small music room with a digital piano and a kit for composing electronic music.

In the future, the Maker lab space will also be developed, currently equipped with a 3D printer and PC.

From January 2026, the Local Hub will be open three afternoons a week and two Saturdays a month as a space to be freely enjoyed by young people (from 14 years old) with activities supported by the staff.

Isabella Ciapponi Landi, the councilor for culture and education, states:
“The inauguration and opening of the new Local Hub, an expansion of the municipal library towards a cultural hub that will also include the former church of San Giacomo, almost completed, and the Palazzo Pievani, represents an important achievement for the administration in the Library and Culture Sector: a project we immediately believed in, supported by the responsible Dr. Cioccarelli and the librarians.

The Local Hub has been designed as a modern, versatile, open, and multifunctional place capable of responding to diverse needs: suitable for young people, but also a place where the entire community can enjoy events organized and promoted by the administration or book spaces, in accordance with usage criteria, for permitted private needs.

On this occasion, we will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of our library, half a century rich in history and culture, still to be discovered and re-evaluated today. So, I wish that our library can progress relentlessly, offering ever-increasing opportunities and resources and being a community engine capable of fostering socialization and active participation.”