“Cutting-Edge” Memory: Museums and Public Engagement

This proposal concerns my work experience as anthropologist and director of the Museum of Blacksmith's Art and Cutlery in Maniago, a small town in an industrial district of North-East Italy, near the Dolomite Park (UNESCO heritage). The explicit mission of this museum is to act as 'mirror of the local community' applying the eco-museum approach of De Varine. In recent years, we have been using new participatory methods, such as community mapping, art and storytelling, in order to engage local people and stakeholders. The focus of this action-research was directed to deal with heritage as a process for a community based on a historical tradition of cutlers, later transformed by a shift from handicraft to industrial production, currently on a global scale. In this process from local history towards a postindustrial scenario, the Museum allows a space for discussion and for the negotiation between the different social actors, with an active involvement of the population. A track of this actionresearch is directed to schools and to the new generation, through workshops with new technologies (e.g. 3D printed knives shapes) and new materials, while another activity tries to collect memories of the past through mapping by collecting material and immaterial goods that are becoming part of the museum's exhibition. Once the local community becomes aware of and responsible for its cutlers' heritage, public memory can be transformed in a cutting-edge for future society.