Editorial Projects

The Italian Network of Folk Culture, with the second publication dedicated to the Masters of Folk Culture, Lingua, migrazioni, bellezza e magia by Valter Giuliano, begins its first editorial series. This step is another essential action of the Network's innovative way to study and communicating about pop culture.

After a careful investigation, carried out with particular attention to research in the area, have emerged needs of a publishing project, which could become a point of reference for the networks involving schools, universities, libraries, museums and eco-museums.

Many research studies and projects have been published: we must recognize to them a value of "cultural resistance" and the role of disseminating information and scientific sources. However, quite often, they did not pass the local geographical boundaries. That’s why this new tool of the Italian Pop Culture Network aims to have a rigorous editorial line, which goes to make up for the lack of disseminating a cultural history, ever written yet.

The collaboration with Slow Food, a member of the Network from the beginning, ensures this project a distribution on the national territory, as well as the experience of a cultural policy that revolutionized the concept of the local community. Also thanks to this cooperation, the Italian Network of Folk Culture can keep representing a hope not to waste the wealth of knowledge representing the true biodiversity of our culture. On the editorial point of view, consequently, the goal is to identify, develop and create actions to convey a knowledge often transmitted only orally and that runs the risk of disappearing forever.

To carry out this work in a methodical way, is been created a system of "territories in network" that has no equal in Italy, and we're already working on a similar path to involve all the Euro-Mediterranean area (from Egypt to Morocco, from Spain to France, from Romania to Albania, from the Balkans to Turkey). Like the idea of an editorial project, also this tool has received an enthusiastic response and support. It's come not only by institutions and organizations, but also by thousands of individuals who see in recognizing, systematizing and conveying the local - where the living energies of the community coexist - the chance to participate directly in the cultural policy and social development of our country. These people, the "voluntaries of the network", are now a reality across the whole Italian territory: the bearers of a different conception of cultural formation, where the culture is becoming an everyday occurrence with well known roots. In simple terms, these volunteers are not satisfied with a policy of the cultural event as a "consumer product".

I want to underline how the liveliness of this project, which of course has the participation of Regions, Provinces, Municipalities and other local authorities, resides however in the common sense of thousands of young and old people, in their proposals and desire to meet the Masters of Pop Culture, starting a transmission path of the knowledge they inherited.

In addition, since 2009 the Network has met with over thirty communities of recent migration, which are an active presence in our territories, as well as witnesses of an oral tradition of inestimable value. This knowledge, thanks to confrontation and dialogue, is building the heritage of a new and – at the same time - ancient, multicultural community. 

To conclude, I'd like to remember that the Network is represented by "antennas" on the whole Italian territory. To identify an antenna we have underlined three essential skills: the involvement of a public body or public attention; a pool of people, associations or volunteers with organizational skills; a stable relationship with a scientific committee or university. Of course, I say it again, all this would not have a chance to develop without a real participation of local communities, with which it can be possible to build a strategic work.

Right in this direction, marked out by the interaction between the local identities and the most important national and international institutions, goes part of the second volume dedicated by Valter Giuliano to the Masters of Folk Culture, interviewed with political passion and transformed into compelling stories by a strong journalistic skill.
                                                                       

Antonio Damasco

Director of the Italian Network of Folk Culture

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