Community heritage
A work of collective memory
Inherit
One does not really inherit something if the one who receives it does not really appropriate it and transform it from what it was when it belonged to the previous custodian. To inherit means to make mine, both in the sense of gratitude to the person who left me something, and in the sense of the symbolic spoliation of what was before to make it what it is now. It is a complex, sophisticated, delicate and meaningful act. This also applies to symbolic and collective inheritances such as intangible cultural heritage. It is received, transformed and appropriated. Only in this way will that heritage still be active, meaningful, alive and vital. The traditions, stories, words, customs, rituals, myths, everything that makes up the intangible heritage of that strange social formation we call our people belonged to someone before us.
Community
It is therefore something that is still alive, anchored in a tradition, but which is still passed on 'from generation to generation' in various ways. What we usually designate as a community appears to us as a homogeneous social group in which the bonds between people are strong, solid, in a certain sense 'natural'. It is the us that is different from them. However, it is not so simple: in communities it is not all milk, honey and easy relationships. In the community, individuals are bound by the need for each other to be complete: they are together because alone they would be less than they are when united. Every act of collective memory is therefore a choice: we, together, today, choose to remember some past because we feel it is important for us to do so; because the past speaks to our present and our future.
Custos Vallis
La nascita di un progetto
Promoserio, in collaboration with Seriana Valley Mountain Community, University of Bergamo and professionals from the cultural world, started from right here: from the desire to give life to a project of discovery and valorization of all the multiform knowledge and representations that make up the identity intangible heritage of the ValSeriana.
This is an articulated and constantly evolving process, which in putting this site online sees the first stage of a process destined to continue over the years, to be modified and enriched with the contribution of all those who wish to share knowledge and values and of those who can use this tool for research and studies.
The digital space – realised thanks to the contribution of the GAL Presolana e Laghi Bergamaschi – is intended as a tool that looks to the past as a shared value, as a source of inspiration for future projects of territorial enhancement and promotion.
The project first set itself the goal of method, to outline a sort of authoritative instruction manual, with criteria for cataloguing and investigation that would be recognised and shared by all those who will deal with the subject in the years to come.
The importance of this operation presupposes the need to trigger new networks of collaboration between local historians, professionals in the sector, researchers, museums, tourist operators and the local community, each one willing to make their own cultural background available to the community and the territory.
It is an active, collective and memory work, made up of stories, memories, events experienced in the first person, meetings and comparisons, knowledge preserved and passed on, with its own personal interpretation. This is where ‘Custos Vallis‘ comes from: a place of culture and not just a container, thanks to the words and knowledge of the Custodians of Heritage.
With everyone’s contributions, it will be possible to produce social cohesion and strengthen the bonds between us in an effort to answer the question : who are we?
Il patrimonio immateriale
Di cosa si tratta?
Intangible cultural heritage’ refers to the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, know-how – as well as the tools, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated with them – that communities, groups and in some cases individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and gives them a sense of identity and continuity, thereby promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.
[Art. 2.1 – UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003]
Starting from the most authoritative definition of intangible heritage, it was realised that the action of protecting and safeguarding intangible heritage is to be addressed to communities and those who care for them as custodians of intangible culture. Moreover, heritage is not considered so much as objects, but rather as action, as the production of material goods.
It is therefore something that is still alive, anchored in a tradition, but which is still passed on ‘from generation to generation’ in various ways.
To establish what is intangible heritage, therefore, a number of criteria have been taken into consideration to guide the search and selection of material to be considered. These are therefore, few and simple, the questions we must ask ourselves to determine whether we are dealing with an intangible good:
- Is it a vehicle of identity belonging to a community?
- Is it still passed on today? Does it have continuity with the past?
- Is it an expression of diversity and human creativity?
- Is it related to aspects of material culture?
The categories in which the intangible heritage will be catalogued, heirs of the UNESCO ones but with due adjustments in the light of the analysis of the territorial context in which we operate, are the following: Oral traditions; Performing arts; Ritual and festive events; Social customs; Traditional crafts.
By being guided by these questions, it will therefore be possible to travel through the stories, traditions and legends of the many communities of the ValSeriana and create a map, as complete and representative as possible, of the culture of the area, which is indispensable for understanding the past and guaranteeing its present and future.