European Landscape Day 2016

A series of different activities, each one typical of the ecomuseum which promotes it and coherent with the time and place in which it is carried out, aim at showing the diversity and the landscape as sum of endless, small or big, concrete or abstract gestures.

A public event which draws the attention of citizens, mass-media and authorities to the activities that each ecomuseum has carried out or will carry out for its landscape.

Obviously the activity of ecomuseums deals with the landscape, but the two words – ecomuseum and landscape – can also take on different and contrasting meanings. It's better to shed some light on this matter, in particular after the coming into force of the European Landscape Convention.

As a matter of fact, there is a correspondence between the thirty-year challenge of the ecomuseums and the intentions of the Convention: the former want to take the museum beyond the dimension of a static and exclusive institution, the latter aims at “protecting” the landscape from academic visions, which have been a burden, in Italy as well as in other countries, as for the distinction between what cultural assets are and are not.

Anyone can identify themselves with the definition of the Convention, which puts the population at the heart of the concept of landscape, saying that: “ the landscape is an important element for the quality of life of the populations everywhere: in urban areas and in countryside, in degraded as well as in high-quality areas, in special areas, as well as in areas of daily life”.

Many ecomuseums in Italy and Europe have launched activities for the knowledge, the preservation and the enhancement of the landscape, in line with the Convention's intentions. That's the reason for the promotion of this public event, which aims at pointing out year after year all the activities carried out by the ecomuseums for the knowledge, the active protection and the responsible transformation of the places in which they work.