Schools as Protagonists in the Valorization and Communication of their Local Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage education is an important part of the identity-making process of the citizens of every nation. While its relevance is widely recognized and advocated by several governmental pronouncements, the design, deployment and sharing of initiatives where students are actors in a process of discovery-knowledge-interpretation-representation-communication of their local heritage are still lagging behind. More often than not, students’ involvement is enacted through school trips and visits to cultural places and institutions, where students “fight for the only available bench”. This paper presents the ScAR (School Activates Resources) project, that through an array of technology based activities (digital storytelling, creation of multimedia guides for tourists, virtual and augmented reality for cultural heritage, simulation of urban planning, urban gaming…) is succeeding into turning students (from primary to highschool) from passive – and often quite unwilling! – visitor into enthusiast cultural heritage communicators.