Meet the community behind RURITAGE
RURITAGE is not a project. At least if you believe our project territories. Instead, RURITAGE has become a community of people, experiences and exchanges. You can get a glimpse into the community through the recently released project video (down the page). In 13 minutes, the video maker Livia Chaplin, will take you around some of RURITAGE’s territories to meet many central figures in making RURITAGE what it is.
As many things in the story of RURITAGE, the documentary video come from the encounter between people, a chance meeting where same interests come together and give forth to common solution. Livia Chaplin, a Biology and Geology master’s degree student at the University of Bologna, Italy, showed up one afternoon at the Department of Architecture with an idea. Livia had a class about rural regeneration, how heritage can further support this and all these ideas encompassed by RURITAGE. In a world where we constantly speak about cities, development and breaking unsustainable behaviours in vague ways, Livia’s encounter with RURITAGE had made an impression. She wanted to make a documentary about the project, the people behind it and their communities.
«Who watches the video realizes that the project not only had impacts on communities and landscapes where those people come from, but also on them, on a personal level. So, I don’t think it was as much what we wanted to communicate but trying to show what they wanted to communicate».
-Livia Chaplin, author of the video
We already told you a lot about RURITAGE but now it’s time to let people directly involved in projects speak, because they know, better than anyone, the true impact that those projects has had.
For example, through the words of Ilias Valiakos (Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest, Greece), we can understand how those initiatives can affect people: thanks to RURITAGE Geopark, migrants who arrived at Lesvos just to stop by and leave for Europe, developed a new strong bond with the land, and never left. They have never had to risk everything for the unknown again, because they found stability. They found their home through Lesvos’ heritage.
Another interesting story, that demonstrates of the importance of heritage in a regeneration process, could be the one seen through the eyes of Sigurður Sigursveinsson (University Centre of South Iceland, Iceland). «In Iceland there are not many old buildings – as Sigurður says – so the focus of the project was on the natural heritage and the traditional aspects. What has happened in Katla Geopark is that the downward steady trend of depopulation has changed dramatically to an upward trend. Now there are a lot of people living in the Geopark and half of them are foreigners. We have a sort of new society: a blend of locals with a lot of foreign input».
«Everyone was honestly enthusiastic about being part of the documentary. I also must say that it was very satisfying for me to have this immediate bond with them, based on a sense of trust, despite we didn’t know each other. And this for sure made my work funnier and easier».
-Livia Chaplin, author of the video
Everyone who took part in RURITAGE knows how important engaging a local communication is for conserving, managing and developing heritage. A community can be thought of as a powerful tool that, if used correctly, can collect, share interests and ideas, and over time ensure a strengthened resilience. In line with this, Carmen Arnuncio Aizpún (AIECE, Spain) suggests that is necessary to communicate so people can see, learn and replicate from each other, doing amazing things as those that have been done already.
«On those days, by speaking with the partners, listening to their immersive stories and understanding the impacts the project has had, I definitely felt the will to want to continue being a community even outside the boundaries of the project. And this will be possible if we strengthen our communities and create more of them among us. This is an essential tool to grow, and to grow in the right way: by taking care of each other».
-Livia Chaplin, author of the video
So, if you’re asking what the most important lesson learned through the four years with RURITAGE is, the answer would be, for sure, that the true strength of the project lays in the personal exchange. We have learned that the precious end product is not the project itself but the community arising from it. The RURITAGE community will remain, expecting to continue to expand, strengthen and exchange ideas across the world, welcoming more rural areas to join us and say “I am RURITAGE!”
