Val Vigezzo Flok Group was born in 1922 with the aim of popularizing the culture from Val Vigezzo.
Alfredo and Erina Belcastro, brother and sister, founded the group. They were restaurant owners that had followed their family tradition. Erina and her brother ( who became a painter later) studied the clothing and the social background of this valley in detail. Their aim was to describe meticulously the typical characters from Vigezzo that are now popular even abroad, such as : the painter, the chimneysweep, the emigrant Giovan Maria Farina, famous promulgator of Acqua di Colonia, invented by his fellow villager Gianpaolo Feminis. Let’s not forget the ones that mark, with their hard labor, the everyday life of the valley: the craftsman, the goatherd, the country girls, the mule, mythical necessarily smuggler, the postilion, the woodcutter and the hunter.

The group, led with strictness by the exigent Rinetta (Miss Belcastro) started to excel for its beauty and its historical faithfulness, thanks to a solid program of parades in big cities and in the most popular folk competitions, with an Italian and foreign audience

The people approved and Val Vigezzo became known everywhere. The daily newspaper Il Corriere della Sera wrote:” With this group flows the image of the simple rural life that chooses the colors of its clothes from the simple and clear colors of fields, crops and woods.”

In 1978, after more than fifty years of tireless devotion to the cause of her valley, Miss Erina Belcastro gave up in favor of a young teacher – hotel owner, Miss Susanna Giorgis, her main assistant for years in leading the group. Susy intensified the activity of the group, enriching it with new characters belonging to the history from Vigezzo, among whom the mythical witch and her persecutor, the magistrate Giacomo Guidizzone, sadly popular Inquisitor that ruled in Vigezzo in the 17th century. The rest is history of today. This folk group keeps on representing one of the most genuine, lasting and lively expressions of Val Vigezzo, well known also as the valley of the Painters, of which it brings its history, culture, traditions and colors everywhere with the same enthusiasm over the years.