Monno, a small village in the upper Valle Camonica, stands as a marginal yet generative Alpine context where cultural heritage becomes living practice. At its centre is Ca’Mon (‘the house of Monno’), a Community Centre for Art and Mountain Craft, opened in 2021 in the former village nursery. More than just a space, Ca’Mon acts as a relational device where residents, artists, artisans, and researchers co-create multifaceted projects, reinterpreting traditions as resources for the present. The centre hosts diverse practices that connect traditional knowledge with contemporary artistic and social experimentation. Artistic residencies generate works at the intersection of language, material culture, and ecological awareness; agricultural practices and soundscapes become sites of inquiry into resilience and biodiversity. Together, these activities shape Ca’Mon as a platform where craft, art, and environment converge.
Between 2022 and 2023, master’s students in Eco-Social Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano engaged with this ecosystem of practice, developing POST ALPE, the participatory reactivation of a farm cart in disuse into a mobile community hub, alongside Di trame future e desideri svelati, a collective installation grounded in participatory imagination. Both interventions illustrate how heritage can be reframed as a shared, generative resource.
This trajectory points to a form of cultural practice where past and present are woven together, enabling new forms of belonging, participation, and situated futures in Alpine territories.
