Faberlab celebrates a year of innovation and creativity

Three-D printers, Arduino boards, software design, but also professionals and businesspeople learning, side by side with students, enthusiasts and creative talents; it is this mix of innovation, contamination and creation that has defined Faberlab, in Tradate, which has just turned one. The digital workshop of Confartigianato Imprese Varese began its life a year ago, on 20 March 2014, and since then, its offices, in Tradate, in Viale Europa 4/A, have become a point of reference for anyone (businesspeople, designers, students, teachers, makers, the general public and people with start-ups) that wants to know about and use digital technologies.

Faberlab has become part of what seems to be the main approach to achievinginnovation; it is a shared space, where training, experimentation and the use of innovative tools mix and contaminate each other, where all users, whose only common denominator is a desire to bring innovation to their business or their knowledge, can find the inspiration to feed their creativity.

And Confartigianato has decided to celebrate Faberlab’s first birthday, with an event, on Friday 20 March, from 8.30 pm (in the Faberlab space), at which Mirco Piccin, from Officine Arduino, will be present at the start of a course on the world’s most famous open-source board, which is scheduled for Saturday 21 and Sunday 22. (To enrol).

Faberlab is celebrating its first year of business, which can boast over 800 participants at the events organised by the “Workshop of Ideas”; 130 people took part in organised courses; 1500 students were involved in the various activities; a total of about 1000 users visited Faberlab, 40% of whom were businesspeople, another 40% of whom were designers, and the remainder, associations, public corporations and students. These figures are seen as a success by Confartigianato, who created Faberlab, to provide the province with a place where innovation could be shared, in which to try out the various forms of digital technology (design, communication, production), creating a network of knowledge, skills and instruments, with training courses, meetings and workshops. Confartigianato have explained that, today, Faberlab indeed appears to have become a hub of innovation; it is careful to respond to companies’ demand for innovation, to support them in the constant search for new solutions, and to guide them, also along paths that are not always traditional, to develop their competitiveness using “open” methods. 

“We created Faberlab as a separate brand from Confartigianato,” the Chairman of the association, Davide Galli, explained. “We wanted to make it independent, in order not to impose a mode of operation on it, but to make it grow as a digital place that is open to everyone, students, hobbyists, businesspeople and professionals alike, where resources for innovation come and go continually. This first year of business has been stimulating, and has encouraged us to welcome new challenges, which is also why Confartigianato Varese, with its workshop, is going to be the star of Fuori Expo’s Italian Makers Village, in Milan, in the month of May.”

The latest news, presented by

Angelo Bongio, of Confartigianato’s innovation office, and Umberto Rega, who is in charge of the training area, include the fact that the digital workshop has become part of the national co-working network Cowo®, which was created from an idea by Laura Coppola and Massimo Carraro, and that a branch of Faberlab has opened in the town of Lodi, to strengthen the network, a tool for sharing experiences, know how, skills and projects.