Ecomuseum for boys and girls: participatory itineraries for the rediscovery of the territory
The Ecomuseum of Boys and Girls is an educational project for public schools in the eastern suburbs of Rome, which aims to strengthen students' sense of belonging to their community through knowledge and protection of the cultural and environmental heritage and the co-transformation of its territory in an Urban Ecomuseum.
Local
Italy
The project was developed in the fifth municipality of Rome, in the Tor Pignattara district, the multicultural heart of the Italian capital which suffers from the classic problems of the suburbs of large cities (social conflicts, poverty, early school leaving, etc.)
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Ecomuseo Casilino ad Duas Lauros Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Claudio Last name of representative: Gnessi Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: President and legal representative Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via Casilina 436 Town: Rome Postal code: 00177 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 347 077 7788 E-mail:ecomuseocasilino@gmail.com Website:http://www.ecomuseocasilino.it
The Boys and Girls Ecomuseum is an educational project for public schools in the eastern suburbs of Rome, which aims to enhance students' sense of belonging to their community through knowledge and protection of cultural heritage and through the co-transformation of its territory in an Urban Ecomuseum.
Our initiative stems from the idea that the development of the suburbs needs solid and resilient communities, capable of taking care of their territory and actively participating in its development. In east Rome, unfortunately, such a situation does not exist because the communities are disunited and often conflicting. This is due to the chronic problems of these areas leading the inhabitants to perceive their neighborhoods more like prisons than common goods. This blocks the emergence of the sense of community and generates negative impacts on social cohesion and indifference towards the themes of cultural and environmental protection.
For these reasons, the Boys and Girls Ecomuseum intends to start a reframe of this perception and, by leveraging the extraordinary cultural heritage present in the area, intends to rebuild a positive relationship between the area and the people. We think that this is the only way to create the conditions for the birth of a true heritage community. It is an investment for the future and for this reason we have chosen students as a target: the citizens of tomorrow.
Through interactive lessons, workshops and heritage walks, the project encourages students to explore their cultural heritage and develops a sense of pride and connection with their community. Thanks to the co-planning workshops, the students will contribute to building the Urban Ecomuseum, showing how to plan the territory, how to enhance it, how to govern it. Their daily space will no longer be a "black hole" to escape from, but an extraordinary place to be proud of and of which they themselves will be guides and ambassadors.
Heritage
Participation
Outskirts
School
Sustainabilty
This project addresses environmental and social sustainability through student-centered and interactive learning experiences. The educational actions proposed, in fact, educate future generations both in the protection of the environment and in the collective commitment to safeguard and promote the cultural heritage.
In this sense it promotes the centrality of the community as a factor of social cohesion and educates young people to the idea that the development of a territory is not necessarily linked to the exploitation of resources, but can arise from sustainable and environmentally friendly practices.
In this sense, the project involves students in the construction of this sustainable development model, making them experience directly what it means to design, care for and protect their environment and their territory.
The Ecomuseum of boys and girls, therefore, fosters the next generation of sustainable citizens who are aware of their cultural and environmental heritage and how important it is to preserve it, not only for ecological reasons but also because it represents the inexhaustible energy source that feeds an ethical, sustainable and lasting development.
The Boys' and Girls' Ecomuseum promotes a holistic approach to the study and co-planning of the territory, thanks to a series of interdisciplinary initiatives that make it possible to understand its different dimensions: cultural, environmental, human, social.
In this way, students are offered a path of re-appropriation of their daily living space, to rediscover and recognize it according to new and interesting points of view. In this way, the project makes it possible to represent the social and cultural diversity of the territory, guaranteeing all participants to be represented according to their own culture, experience and sensitivity.
This approach allows the project to develop positive cultural and emotional experiences, capable of reinforcing the sense of belonging and achieving the following objectives:
Educating about sustainability thanks to activities that raise awareness on the protection of ecosystems, the landscape and the conscious use of natural resources
Ensuring uniqueness, taking into account the social, cultural and emotional specificities of the student
Promote activities that arouse positive emotions and help strengthen cultural identity in the name of complexity and tolerance
Develop activities centered on the student and therefore capable of being expressions of their needs and capable of enhancing their experiences
The strength of the boys' and girls' Ecomuseum lies in its ability to make these objectives a shared point of arrival and not an abstract set of results. This is possible because the activity program addresses a subject that closely concerns the students, which refers to their cultural, emotional and historical context. It is not a project aimed at creating an object (more or less capable of having an impact on people's well-being) but at (re)building a relationship, a feeling, a perception. In this sense we believe it is an exemplary initiative, scalable in other contexts.
The Ecomuseum for boys and girls develops an educational process based on a multidisciplinary approach that directly involves various professionals (urban planners, historians, anthropologists, etc.) and takes the form of a series of participatory activities that brings together students, stakeholders, citizens and institutions .
In this way the project manages to achieve several key objectives:
- It involves a wide audience regardless of economic, social and cultural background; not only school students but also local stakeholders (entrepreneurs, institutions, merchants, workers, etc.) who participate directly in both workshops and public events
- Develop a participatory planning of the entire territory, through the construction of a community map in which students can represent an alternative, sustainable and culturally based model of governance of their space
- Builds a model of cultural design of the public space of a participatory type and therefore capable of taking into account the needs of all people (even those with disabilities)
- Educate students and communities to imagine a new, more sustainable social model, based on environmental protection and development that respects natural, social and landscape resources
Through the project, the students and the community participate in the construction of a new image and a new narration of the territory, actively contributing to transforming it into an Urban Ecomuseum. This process allows not only the students but the entire local community to co-design a new model of sustainable territorial planning and a new ethical and sustainable development system.
The recipients of the project and the community as a whole will be able to benefit from this initiative because it is aimed at co-planning a more sustainable territory, equipped with better organized public spaces, capable of proposing an ethical and culturally based development model. The establishment of an Urban Ecomuseum to which students contribute in collaboration with other parts of civil society is a strong boost to social cohesion because it strengthens the links between people and the territory, enhancing the sense of belonging and active participation in the protection and development of the own living and working space.
The project, as we have already described, is developed according to a participatory methodology, which involves a very wide audience, starting with the students and reaching the stakeholders and local institutions. The impact of this involvement is significant as it can enhance awareness of the richness of the territory, erasing a negative perception that has been an obstacle to the formation of a cohesive and resilient community. At the same time it proposes an idea of territorial development that best reflects the wishes of a community in need of meeting spaces, public green spaces, environmental quality and sustainable economic development.
The Ecomuseum of boys and girls allows you to create the conditions to strengthen the local community and give it an active role in shaping its territory, helping to build a stronger sense of ownership and responsibility for the places where people live and work .
As we have already anticipated, the Ecomuseum of boys and girls is developed according to a participatory methodology that starts from the school and reaches more general levels.
At school level, the project involves an average of 300-400 people including students, teachers and school staff. In this phase, multidisciplinary professionals are involved who help the students to map the territory, identify points of interest and tell the public about them.
Subsequently, through a series of public events (heritage walks, presentations, exhibitions and workshops), local stakeholders, residents and institutions are also involved, thus ensuring the expansion of participation at the local level.
The result of this work at the local level is then brought to the attention of the municipal authorities, in order to submit the co-planning work to their attention and verify that it is in line with the objectives and strategies of these authorities.
Finally, the project also involves the regional authorities who are currently financing the activity thanks to the funds destined to finance the activities of the ecomuseums of the Lazio Region.
The Ecomuseum for boys and girls has a multidisciplinary approach and therefore makes available to students and other participants a series of analysis and planning tools pertaining to different fields of knowledge.
The representatives of these various sectors (urban planners, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, etc.) actively participate in the training of the students and guide the participants in deepening their knowledge of the territory and in its co-planning as an Urban Ecomuseum.
In the context of the workshops, the various professional figures collaborate with each other and with the participants to create a sustainable, inclusive and low environmental impact design of the territory, capable of responding to the needs of socializing and enhancing the cultural heritage through routes for pedestrians and bycicles.
The added value of this process is on the one hand the increase in awareness of the participants in the cultural and landscape importance of the territory, on the other the realization of a participatory project that arises from the union of citizens' aspirations, the specificities of the territory and of the multidisciplinary skills of the professionals involved.
A project that enhances the sense of belonging, building a new local identity around a vision that finally recognizes the value and potential of the area.
The Ecomuseum of boys and girls is a project that presents innovative factors with respect to mainstream actions in the same field.
First of all, it proposes an interdisciplinary approach that brings together a wide range of disciplines, including urban planning, art, anthropology and history, to create a holistic approach to cultural heritage. This makes it possible to overcome the mainstream narrative, overcoming the categories of "outskirt" and "margin" and restoring centrality to the community as the engine of territorial regeneration.
In this sense, the project places sustainability in the foreground, both from a social and an environmental point of view. The lens of cultural heritage becomes a way to enhance social cohesion, creating the conditions for the birth of heritage communities that can play a leading role in the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion.
Another element of innovation is the participatory method, functional for involving not only the student community, but also that of residents and local stakeholders. In this way, those who live and work in the area play a leading role in shaping their cultural heritage and environment. From this point of view the initiative presents another factor of innovation, as it encourages an entire local community to experiment with new and creative ways to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage, while addressing the pressing challenges of our time.
The Ecomuseum of boys and girls is a project that presents structural elements that make it scalable in other contexts: interdisciplinarity, participation, social and environmental sustainability, experimentation. These elements offer a great advantage: on the one hand they are indispensable for launching projects that need a close relationship with the social and cultural context of reference, on the other they are not designed to work in a specific context, but can "migrate" different social and cultural realities, even of non-Western culture.
Interdisciplinary indicates the opportunity to consider the territory as a complex area, which needs more points of view. It does not indicate which ones, but urges you to find them.
The participation tool makes it possible to co-construct the entire project, overcoming the differences between different contexts through the protagonism of those who live and work in the area.
Attention to social and environmental sustainability are common factors in every social and cultural context, consequently, it is a variable that does not change depending on the context.
The experimental character leads the project to always measure itself against situations, not imposing pre-established models, but creating them in the relationship with different contexts, people, cultures and needs
In this sense, methodologies, processes and products can also be scaled. For example, the processes of involvement make it possible to dialogue with local communities in ways that are consistent with the contexts of reference. Or the expected product, the urban ecomuseum, is a highly flexible cultural device, which draws nourishment from any form of cultural heritage (material or immaterial) and consequently can be adapted to each specific situation. Finally, the experimental methodology offers enormous margins of adaptability, precisely because it does not impose solutions but seeks to find them in an innovative and creative way
As we have already described, the project methodology is based on the combination of interdisciplinarity and participation, from which the experimental nature of the approach derives.
Through the interdisciplinary approach, the project is arranged to face the territory in all its complexity, avoiding shortcuts and simplifications. From this premise of method originate both the interpretation actions (according to the points of view that will be identified together with the communities), and the planning actions which involve the professionals who will help the students in the co-planning activities.
Through the participatory approach, on the other hand, priority is given to consultation and co-creation with communities and stakeholders, engaging first of all students and then local communities and stakeholders in a collective process of mental and material reframe of the territory. From this point of view, it is the participatory approach that makes dialogue possible between the people who live and inhabit the area, thus creating the conditions for a heritage community to consolidate, based on the cultural heritage that is recognized and interpreted.
Thanks to these two methodological pillars, the experimental action develops, made up of the collective construction of sustainable and inclusive solutions that connect people to their cultural heritage and promote a sense of identity and community.
The project aims to provide local solutions to some global challenges, with particular attention to those concerning the protection of cultural heritage, the improvement of social and cultural connections and the promotion of sustainability and inclusiveness.
In detail, these are the global challenges to which the project tries to provide local solutions:
Sustainability: The initiative aims to create sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions to preserve cultural heritage sites, buildings and structures.
Inclusiveness: By involving communities and stakeholders in the design process, the initiative promotes inclusiveness and improves the accessibility of cultural heritage for all people.
Social and cultural fragmentation: by promoting cultural heritage and local values, the initiative aims to foster a sense of identity, belonging and community.
Economic development: By revitalizing cultural heritage sites, the initiative aims to stimulate local economies through tourism and the creation of new jobs and business opportunities.
Climate Change: The initiative recognizes the impact of climate change on cultural heritage and seeks to create adaptive and resilient solutions that protect and preserve cultural heritage for future generations.
The Ecomuseum for boys and girls has reached a good level of maturity, given that it has been tested for over 5 years and has involved a total of over 1,500 students from schools in the eastern suburbs of Rome.
In detail, the project has led to the creation of 3 new community maps which have identified subsets of heritage which have been included in the general catalog of the Casilino Ecomuseum:
- the film heritage map
- the water landscape heritage map
- the map of the artistic heritage linked to migrations
These three areas were identified and described by the students, who directly involved the residents in the development of the heritage files and in the definition of the itineraries. All the paths were presented in public events, open to citizens and which saw the participation of school and municipal institutions.
A particularly important case concerns the third map, which gave rise to a multidisciplinary research carried out by a foundation specialized in migration studies. The research made it possible to discover a memorial heritage, linked to the migrations of eastern Rome, which was in danger of disappearing. In this sense, the work of the students made it possible to start a safeguard action which today ended in the establishment of M.A.U.Mi, the first Museum of Public Art on Migrations, which has a collection of 10 street art works that tell this story and will soon also have a library and a documentary collection.
The project is still ongoing and the next step is the one identified by the students of the "Laparelli" school in the "Tor Pignattara" district: to build a museum in which to preserve and exhibit the oral heritage of the area (stories, songs, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, etc. .)
