A few months ago the biennial Matres International Women's Ceramics Festival, which took place between two cities of ancient ceramic tradition, Cava de' Tirreni and Vietri sul Mare, ended with great success. The Pandora Association with the Matres Festival has become a cultural enterprise that promotes and produces initiatives throughout the year, exporting its Festival with projects carried out in Italy and abroad that has increasingly become one of the international profile attracting events of women's ceramics. For years, the Campania Region, which I represent, has supported the event because of its ability to promote Equal Opportunities between women and men in the world, ceramic handicrafts and foster cultural exchanges. It is precisely artistic handmade ceramics that is the activity that most of all testifies to the genius and skill of the master craftsmen of our land. The Matres has the ability to transform the area where the events take place into a widespread incubator of cultural, tourist and social enterprises, linked to the recovery of tradition and innovation with a distinctive note: that of highlighting and enhancing the skills of women in the practice of ceramic art and artistic craftsmanship, within the framework of the Campania, Italian and international women's art scene. Another major and important initiative kicks off soon in Havana and we are very pleased to tighten with this new project the relations between the Campania Region and Cuba. Relations that have actually been underway for years with institutional cooperation initiatives for the promotion of economic and productive relations between the Republic of Cuba and the Region itself. This close relationship aims at cooperation between local authorities in various strategic sectors. Undoubtedly The Matres Festival fully carries out an action of artistic, cultural and social promotion and activates positive synergies between excellences of our territory and increasingly global economic and social needs of the contemporary world, through its own inter-relational method.

In particular, Matres, characterized by its female traction, expresses a new connotation to the whole and highlights the power and versatility of women.

"Matres - International Women's Ceramics Festival" develops and spreads the tool of ceramic know-how, as an attractor and element of growth, and has over the years given numerous inputs for appreciable territorial and social redevelopment operations, with particular attention to the link between associations, entities and local entrepreneurship. Tangible are the spillovers on the tourism and economic level as well. In this particular circumstance, the support of the Campania Region wants to emphasize even more the commitment to this event that cultivates beauty authenticity and uniqueness.