A contemporary workshop where learning happens by doing, alongside master craftspeople

Born as a “workshop-school” within Cometa, Contrada degli Artigiani is, in every respect, a fully fledged woodworking workshop. It is a place that works alongside the laboratories of the Oliver Twist School, offering students opportunities for real experience and concrete work. It is also an inclusive workplace where master craftspeople share the knowledge of the hands with vulnerable people and people with disabilities: design, materials, finishes, precision, and taste.

Here, artisanal excellence becomes both an educational and professional experience: from making to knowing, as an opportunity for work and learning within the school. Contrada was founded in 2008 precisely to explore this alliance between craft workshop and school, born from the desire to offer equal opportunities to those facing difficulty.

Today, this same spirit animates all the workshops connected to design and the trades promoted by Cometa: a culture of work in which quality is not a luxury, but an educational criterion that enhances the uniqueness of each person.

Contrada degli Artigiani is a place where manual work becomes experience, relationship, and care for reality.

In its workshops, bespoke furniture, objects, and interior elements take shape, designed to inhabit spaces with beauty and functionality.

Wood is at the heart of much of the work: tables, chairs, kitchens, bookcases, boiserie, and furnishing solutions are born from the encounter between design, material, and the hand of the craftsperson.

Alongside woodworking, restoration and decoration make it possible to give new life to furniture, interiors, and homes, respecting their history and original value.

Every intervention requires listening, patience, and attention to detail, so that nothing is ever treated as a mere product.

The presence of diverse skills — from design to woodworking, from textiles to decoration — allows each project to be accompanied through all its stages.

From the initial idea to the final realization, Contrada creates spaces designed for the people who live them.

It is work made of experience, tradition, and a contemporary vision, where quality is born from the time devoted to things.

In this workshop, master craftspeople and young apprentices share a trade every day.

In this way, the service offered is not only technical: it expresses a way of working in which beauty, responsibility, and care become part of the same gesture.

Work for everyone

In Cometa’s educational method, work is culture: it involves intelligence, responsibility, creativity, and relationship. This is why training brings master craftspeople and businesses alongside students, offers real experiences, and requires beautiful, orderly places: conditions that foster the personal and professional growth of young people.

The beauty of the places where activities take place makes the people who live them feel special: spaces created to welcome and to make each person feel at home.

The origin, the story, a sign

A simple story, born from a “yes”. In 1986, Erasmo Figini and his wife Serena opened their home to welcome a child whom no one wanted. That “yes” became a community, immediately joined by Erasmo’s brother Innocente and his wife Marina, and then, encounter after encounter, by other families, volunteers, professionals, educators, and friends. Over time, they gave life to an educational, training, and employment network.

Cometa means “welcoming in order to educate”: foster care, school and training, work inclusion, and support for families. It is a place where each person can discover their own uniqueness and become fully themselves.

Foster care at Cometa was the beginning of a story made of daily responses to the needs of reality. It was not a predefined project, but the desire to respond to concrete needs. This is how the following initiatives came to life:

• Una Casa per Crescere, an educational and guidance pathway for children and young people aged 6 to 14;
• a summer centre, designed to provide educational continuity during school holidays;
• a space for listening and accompaniment for families, children, and adolescents in difficulty;
• a school with an educational offer serving more than 400 students;
• courses dedicated to migrants, NEETs, and young people at risk of dropping out of school;
• pathways for job placement and accompaniment into the world of work;
• professional training courses for people with disabilities and vulnerabilities;
• an amateur sports organisation involving 200 young people;
• workplaces in the fields of cafés, pastry-making, woodworking, accessories and clothing outlets, where people with disabilities and vulnerabilities work side by side with craftspeople and professionals.