​Remote Experience: two weeks in Alcara Li Fusi

From 1 to 15 June 2026, Inesto begins the operational phase of Remote Experience in Alcara Li Fusi, a historic village in the Nebrodi Mountains, Sicily. The project is financed under PNRR M1C3 – Investment 2.1 "Attrattività dei Borghi Storici", through European Union funds NextGenerationEU, and managed by the Italian Ministry of Culture. Lead entity: Municipality of Alcara Li Fusi. Partners: Inesto, Youtribe, Tre60Lab, Radica Festival.

What is Remote Experience

Remote Experience is a structured temporary residency programme in Italian historic villages. The model brings together digital nomads, placemakers, urban planners, cultural designers, and professionals from different sectors — and has them inhabit a village for a defined period, not as tourists, but as active temporary residents.

The goal is not footfall. It is impact: social, economic, cultural. Remote Experience works on a concrete question: what happens when people with different skills choose to live and work for several weeks in a place like Alcara Li Fusi, and what remains after they leave?

Alcara Li Fusi: the context

Alcara Li Fusi is a medieval village in the Nebrodi Mountains, in the province of Messina, within the Nebrodi Regional Natural Park. Significant cultural and landscape heritage — 24 protected assets, thousand-year-old intangible traditions including the Festa del Muzzuni, DOP and IGP agricultural products — but also, like many villages in inland Italy, marked by decades of demographic decline and underuse of its own resources.

This is precisely the kind of territory where Remote Experience makes sense.

A living lab for social innovation and urban regeneration

The two weeks in June are not an event. They are a living lab: an exploratory operational phase in which the group of participants inhabits the village, interacts with the local community, evaluates the hospitality infrastructure, and co-designs the experiential model that will shape the next stages of the project.

The group includes digital nomads, placemakers, urban planners, Erasmus+ experts, software developers, and cultural designers. The composition is deliberate: Remote Experience does not work with a homogeneous target. It works when different competencies cross-pollinate in the same physical space — and that physical space is a village that has everything except visibility.

Every output of these two weeks — feedback, documentation, design inputs — becomes material for the phases that follow.

Artistic residencies: Tre60Lab and Radica Festival

Alongside the digital nomad living lab, Tre60Lab and Radica Festival activate the artistic residency component of the programme. Artists and creatives will work on-site in Alcara Li Fusi, developing a production calendar in direct dialogue with the village's cultural heritage, the Nebrodi landscape, and local stakeholders.

The residencies produce site-specific work, conceived for and partly intended to remain in the village. Exhibitions, open community events, and public encounters will be documented and shared as they take shape.

Why this project matters

Italian historic villages do not have a beauty problem. They have a systemic problem: inadequate hospitality infrastructure, the absence of a temporary-presence economy, and disconnection from the flows of professionals who today work remotely and are looking for exactly this kind of place.

Remote Experience is not the solution. It is a method for understanding how to build one — by working inside the problem, not from outside it.

Remote Experience is financed through the public call for proposals for the cultural and social regeneration of small historic villages, under PNRR M1C3 – Investment 2.1 "Attrattività dei Borghi", financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and managed by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC).

Lead entity: Municipality of Alcara Li Fusi. 

Partners: Inesto, Youtribe, Tre60Lab, Radica Festival.