There is a connection between the world we live in and the stories which directly or undirectly tell it. But there is also a way to intervene in reality right from the pretences that tell it from this narratives. It was on the basis of this conviction that Hamelin was born.

All our activities come from the will of creating a tight interdependence between cultural promotion and pedagogic vocation, indipendently from the public we address to (children, teenagers, adults) or the expressive tool we use: literature, comics, illustration or cinema.

Reading is the privileged tool to achieve this goal. Whether they are books, single or sequenced images, static or in movement, reading is a fundamental act because it leads inevitably to the research of sense, of oneself or of the world around us. This is why stories are not pleasant occasions for imaginary evasions but survival tools.

The study of children literature has been the first core of an activity which has lead little by little to elaborate specific strategies of reading promotion for children and youngsters with a special attention for teenagers. Hamelin acts it through reading trails for primary, secondary and high schools, thematic bibliographic guides, updating courses for librarians, secondary and high school teachers, the national reading contest for teenagers "Xanadu. Comunità di lettori ostinati".

The universe of visual and specially, comics and illustration, is the other privileged field of action of the association. Through comics workshops for schools, meetings with children and teenagers, updating courses for teachers and librarians, didactic exhibitions, exhibitions for promoting young artists or spreading wider the knowledge of important but too unknown comics authors or illustrators, Hamelin intends to educate young and old to "un certain regard".

Bilbolbul. International Comics Festival in Bologna is the occasion in which Hamelin highlights this effort. Come to its forth edition, every year recalls to Bologna over fifty Italian and foreign authors and offers the town territory the possibility of seeing the works of about twenty authors.

All this activity and the continuous broaden of the thematic horizons discussed have lead the association to publish the four-monthly review "Hamelin. Storie, figure, pedagogia", which condenses all our work through proposals of reading, pedagogy, children literature, comics, illustration, cinema until penetrating in the territory of collective dreams from the today and the past.

Hamelin is a no profit cultural association.