Living in Prato :
Education and welfare

The time workshop

A place for participation and coming together

Founded in 2003 to promote harmony between the rhythms of life, work and leisure time of men and women, the Time workshop is a place for participation and coming together, a training centre, and a different way of providing services to citizens. The workshop was designed as an informal space, managed jointly by different associations with the support and under the coordination of the municipal government.
Over the years the Time workshop has become more and more a place where Italian and foreign women meet to discuss their psycho-physical well-being, to share their experiences and address the changes related to different stages of their lives, but also to seek training opportunities for re-employment or to acquire new skills and knowledge that they were unable to cultivate before because they were busy with work and taking care of children and their families.

The workshop is also attended by men and women who wish to learn ancient skills linked to manual skills, creativity and craftsmanship and who are offered specific training courses made available thanks to provincial, regional, national and European funds. These funded projects provide valuable skills for different work sectors, through training courses that equip workers with key competences for lifelong learning as well as greater flexibility in adapting more quickly to a constantly changing and ever more connected world.

The workshop also represents an opportunity for the associations contributing to the Workshop's bi-annual programme to organize activities, events, and free courses and to collaborate in the creation of the synergies and relationships necessary for making the most of local resources and responding with quality actions to the growing needs of women and men.
The workshop also hosts information and orientation desks that help citizens, and in particular Italian and foreign women, with their every day needs, from the search for local services to the use of computer tools.