The Trophy was created at the behest of the daughter of the poet Turiddu Bella, Maria, in order to enhance the Sicilian language and culture, with particular regard to popular traditions and above all to popular or popular poetry; particular attention is paid to those literary genres that risk total extinction, from ballad to history, from the sonnet to the octave, in addition to polymetric poetry, giving voice to all those poets who do not find adequate spaces in the panorama of dialectal poetry. And so they brought to light, or at least dusted off: doubts, fables, stories, minimize, contrasts. This trophy stands out from all other poetry competitions in dialect because it focused its attention on the Sicilian poetry of the people and the epic-narrative poetry that determined the figure of the storyteller (storycuta) and the puppet opera. Even if today it can be said that the story sung or told, the news story, the courageous deeds of paladins, is being replaced by a new current: the new compositions that can be included in the popular poetry trend are those that tell the story of life. , the popular poet had not yet talked about himself, today the protagonist of the story is the same poet who tells it.

Maria Bella states: "This was my intention to make a competition not a competition, but a research and study laboratory to also set up an association which, expanding the objectives of the Trophy, would deal with the popular traditions of our land, if make it an engine for young people, and give the elderly the way to express their wisdom by returning to the ancestral role of holders of culture and life ". In fact, regardless of the final judgment of the jury, all the texts received are collected in anthologies to respect the principles of the Trophy that wants to give a voice to all those poets who live outside the stream of cultured poets or who have another vision of poetry. .

The competition is attended by well-known and lesser-known dialectal poets, residing both in Sicily and off the island, poets who verse using traditional metric structures and who are inspired above all by memories of the native land, Il Trofeo has made the public aware of the most interesting voices of contemporary Sicilian poetry; educated and expert poets who have brought the level of Sicilian poetry very high, in the variegated Italian regional panorama.

The Competition has 3 sections: Section A - Poetry in Sicilian dialect (unpublished and free topic), Section B - Story in Sicilian dialect (unpublished that does not exceed 4 pages), Section C - Trophy "Il Cantastorie" (a single prize that is assigned, at the unquestionable judgment of the jury, to a storyteller, "cuntastorie ", established or emerging or to an interpreter of popular music).

To make all the initiatives developed around the Prize more concrete, Maria founded the Turiddu Bella Study Center in 1997, which promotes study days, conferences, symposia, and which has given rise to three publications of "Critical studies of the works of Turiddu Nice". In addition to critical essays, the Study Center publishes unpublished works by the poet every year, having them interpreted by storytellers and having actors recite his poems.