Cultural Heritage Education in the Everyday Landscape. School, Citizenship, Space, and Representation

Heritage education applied to the ‘everyday landscape’ encourages young people to rediscover, interpret and communicate their own local heritage, reinventing it to the future. Involving schools in this process means putting them at the centre of a process of engagement, active understanding, critical knowledge, signification and responsibility with respect to their own everyday urban environment, and having them enjoy all this. This approach promotes the knowledge of a little-known and little-valued heritage even in weak urban areas and vulnerable local societies, increasing the active citizenship of students and their families to the territory. This book is inspired by the three-year ScAR research project – “Schools Activates Resources. Stitching up the lost heritage of the suburbs” – carried out by a group of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano in the southern peripheral districts of Milan, a context marked by spatial and social criticalities. In line with the European Landscape Convention, the project embraces cultural landscapes and heritage as a system of values identified by populations and in constant evolution. Tangible and intangible heritage elements fuel the promotion of intergenerational and intercultural dialogue and represent an opportunity for resilient social and territorial development. This book provides a reflection on the research work carried out and the viewpoints of the various contributors involved, and collects the testimonies of the protagonists of similar experiences, proposing an interdisciplinary perspective on the themes addressed by the project.