Una scuola come museo, patrimonio di tutti | A school as a museum, a heritage for everyone

Can a school become a civic-social context that enriches the community to which it belongs? Could a city, through its natural and cultural landscapes, become a context of identification that innervates the culture, symbols and values of a community in students, girls and boys? Can a school engaged in research, which therefore chooses to exist and live here, now, and “in other places” too, foster a broad and genuinely conscious citizenship, which is committed to caring for its environment and territory? A project with these aims has been developing in a Istituto comprensivo in Reggio Emilia, starting from a “provisional” citizenship experience in the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia. Since Territorial Community Agreements (School Pacts, 2020-2021), which have evolved into broader synergies between school and their territory, the horizon, already enriched by the idea of “distributed proximity” of the Small Schools of INDIRE (Shafft, 2016; De Bartolomeis, 2018), is nourished by the suggestions of entities such as ecomuseums, paths of cultural growth of local communities, based on citizens, organizations and associations active participation (Dal Santo et al., 2017). A transversal and intergenerational school enhancement committee which, starting from the students’ gaze, promotes actions concerning the discovery of the school’s cultural heritage, in a historical-social sense, collaborating with partners from the cultural and social fabric of the territory, has led to the creation of networks aimed at interconnect common identities and at active participation.