Digital Participation in Community Life: How Young People Communicate Heritage

The scientific debate highlights situations of educational poverty that are expressed in a growing difficulty in accessing cultural heritage. In this sense, the contexts that are particularly vulnerable are those in which economic, social and individual factors hinder the access of subjects to educational experiences. In this framework, it is necessary to combat educational poverty not only by family income support, but also by providing accessibility to the community’s cultural heritage. In fact, educational poverty is configured as an obstacle to the development of the younger generations who live in multicultural contexts marked by fragility. With reference to this situation, the issues of social innovation, digital growth and cultural heritage, have received new impetus from the European political agenda. In particular, community technologies as citizenship devices that are capable of activating connections and transform users into multimedia content-builders take on impor tance. With respect to these reflections, the contribution presents the experiments carried out in digital environments by the students in planning and managing of educational intervention in social distress at the University of Bologna. The students were involved in the preparation of virtual exhibition paths focused on the themes of social inclusion within which the heritage has become an instrument for the redevelopment of territory. Specifically, digital environments have become spaces of creative production in which young people have reimagined landscapes of everyday life and shared common principles of protection, care and humanity, underlying an idea of conscious citizenship and participation in community life.