Landscape as ‘Working Field’ for Territorial Identity in Friuli Venezia Giulia Ecomuseums Action

Having landscape as a central interest and field of action, ecomuseums play a key role in questioning territorial identity on the community scale. The research focuses on the ecomuseum experiences in Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), exploring the educational, ethical and political dimensions of the ecomuseum activities in relation to landscape. The research shows how activities of ‘landscape education’ involving students, teachers/educators and citizens are instrumental for a general rethinking of the relationships between communities and local territories. Exploratory activities with students (e.g. projects designed with local schools), participatory actions addressing adults and the elderly (including community mapping) and landscape-focused exhibitions question citizens’ possibilities and competencies of recovering local landscape memories, understanding territorial transformations and operating as active subjects in decision-making processes on their landscapes. The results of the research reveal how landscape education activities provide a central contribution in shaping citizens’ community belonging and political awareness towards landscape transformations and how the achievement of ‘democratic landscapes’, understood as a right and collective responsibility, comes through a global cultural change embedding landscape education.