Distant but United: A Cooperation Charter between Ecomuseums of Italy and Brazil

Raul Dal Santo, Nádia Helena Oliveira Almeida and Raffaella Riva - © All rights reserved - PDF version

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Museum International, Volume 73 Issue 3-4, on 2022, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13500775.2021.2016278

Abstract

In 2020, Brazil and Italy were among the countries most adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation highlighted latent structural crises at social and economic levels and prompted widespread concern for the future. Operating in this context, ecomuseums and community museums continued their mission of caring for and interpreting living cultural heritage, empowering communities to sustainably manage heritage and thus contributing to integral local development and the strengthening of a shared social consciousness and identity. Measures aiming at the containment of the pandemic led ecomuseums to explore new methods of public engagement, inspiration and support in a bid to meet the local community’s needs.

The Brazilian Association of Ecomuseums and Community Museums (ABREMC) and the Italian Ecomuseums Network (EMI) discussed and approved the cooperation charter ‘Distant but United. The Ecomuseums and Community Museums of Italy and Brazil’ over the course of several meetings, reflecting on the responsibilities of museums in a period of crisis. The charter identifies the 10-year commitments of the signatories for the implementation of an articulated cooperation programme, as well as defining an annual calendar of promoted actions. It lays out agreed themes and strategic lines (Exchanging, Welcoming, Publishing, Training, Inviting, Organising, Communicating, and Monitoring), as well as implementation times and actions to be carried out with the involvement of actors from both sides.

The charter stresses the role of ecomuseums and community museums in the promotion of both museum practices and a transition towards the creation of resilient communities, supporting them towards the goal of renewing themselves and facing contemporary crises in effective and sustainable ways. This article presents the main themes and objectives of the charter and proposes a theoretical model for understanding how bolstering communities and their ‘social imaginaries’ is crucial to fostering the integral development of communities and social innovation. It first discusses the changes necessary to overcome contemporary crises by drawing on some important theoretical models; before turning to examine how ecomuseums of Italy and Brasil responded to limitations imposed by the Covid- 19 pandemic. It next presents a few ecomuseum practices developed during the pandemic, illustrates the methodology and contents of the charter and, finally, presents the main results, limitations and development prospects of the cooperation experience.

Authors’ bios

Raul Dal Santo is an ecologist and coordinator of both the Landscape Ecomuseum of Parabiago and the Mulini Natural Park near Milan, Italy.

Nádia Helena Oliveira Almeida, is a museologist and a PhD student in Educational Sciences (University of Porto). She has coordinated the Maranguape Ecomuseum since 2005, and has sat on the executive board of the Association of Ecomuseums and Community Museums (ABREMC) in Brazil since 2013.

Raffaella Riva is Assistant Professor of Architectural Technology at the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (Italy).

The authors are part of the steering committee which in 2020 promoted the Cooperation charter ‘Distant but United’.

Keywords

sustainable development, empowerment, cultural heritage enhancement, cooperation, ecomuseums

In the context of severe contemporary crises and the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, ecomuseums and community museums have continued their mission of caring for and interpreting living cultural heritage, empowering communities to sustainably manage heritage and thus contributing to integral local development and the strengthening of a shared social consciousness and identity. During the pandemic, Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums experimented with new ways of involving, inspiring and supporting communities. They also strengthened their networking efforts, first on a national and then binational level, notably by co-creating the Cooperation Charter ‘Distant but United. The Ecomuseums and Community museums of Italy and Brazil’, which highlights a common vision, challenges and shared responsibilities for a bilateral action programme.

This article progresses in five parts. The first discusses the changes necessary to overcome contemporary crises; the second examines how ecomuseums responded to the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic; the third presents the practices of several ecomuseums developed during the pandemic; and the fourth illustrates the methodology and contents of the charter. The final section presents the main results, limitations and development prospects of the cooperation experience.

Latent structural crises and community resilience

The Covid-19 pandemic amplified latent environmental, economic and structural social crises, as well as highlighting profound concerns about the future within local communities. Such concerns strongly disable the shared social imaginary, which can be defined as a community's ability to devise and find effective solutions to the challenges of the contemporary world (Cattini 2021).

According to Geoff Mulgan (2020) the deterioration of the social imaginary arises from a loss of confidence in progress, leading to a decrease in imaginative capacity and a decline in social innovation. While these conditions were already in place, especially in developed countries, the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted them more clearly. To recover creative capacity and therefore better react to crises, Mulgan suggests that it is crucial to develop and foster curiosity through open debate and the free exchange of ideas.

Ideas can produce change if they are followed by actions, and are devised amid the presence of ‘fertile ground’. According to Hugues de Varine (2002) living heritage is the foundation for the future, representing fertile ground for change.¹ Everyone should be tasked with taking care of this heritage, through a voluntary process of social responsibility and governance. Therefore innovation and processes of participation in heritage management are required for significant and permanent changes in the cultural landscape.

Both an increase in creative strategies and the promotion of participation, in their broadest sense, are necessary to foster the cultural, social, and material changes required to reverse the above-mentioned trend and consequently create resilient communities that view crisis as an opportunity for growth.²

To accomplish this, cultural change is first required, and includes educating the community and raising its awareness around the recognition and management of common assets, including environment, landscapes and territories, cultural heritage, education and health. Only education, awareness, and critical consciousness (Freire 2018; Almeida 2018) can promote the accountability of individuals and communities, and consequently foster widespread participation in local processes of development (Arena 2006).

However, these complex goals are difficult to achieve because they involve public and private interests, legal and cultural ownership of goods, expert technical knowledge, material culture and know-how gained through practice. Promoting and enhancing diversity is therefore essential (Fanzini et al. 2019).

Social change is also required to create more crisis-resilient communities. The implementation of participatory processes requires the strengthening of grassroots democracy, as well as a decision-making system capable of considering community requests and translating them into early actions, whilst implementing local knowledge. These participatory processes and strategies for community empowerment give substance to the principles of subsidiarity, which consist in identifying the right actors and the best level for action that is consistent with the issues resolution (Resende Martins 2012). Through such empowerment, all members of a community can genuinely gain functional knowledge towards local development, developing projects and proposals that are both grounded in the physical dimensions of local territories and that draw strong connections between social and environmental issues (Latour 1999).

New models must be implemented to manage cultural landscapes and territories, which can be viewed as a habitat in which anthropic and natural aspects coexist (Riva 2020). These models should promote a new ecological mode of living, along the theoretical lines traced by Ernest Callenbach (1975) with his concept of 'ecotopia'. They should also foster a new economic approach as outlined by Kate Raworth (2017), whose socalled ‘doughnut economics’ revise economic thinking for the 21^st century. Combining the concept of planetary boundaries with the complementary notion of social boundaries, Raworth’s doughnut economics proposes a closer connection between global economy, human rights, environment, microeconomics, the value of common goods, systemic approaches to economy, equity and regeneration.

Next, a continuous process involving strategies for long-term change and the awareness that ‘everything is connected’ are essential. A systemic vision is required to identify connections and trigger synergies, as well as to build relationships that foster integral development (Francesco I 2015; Ronchi 2021). Cultural and social changes can lead to material changes when the former are permanent and implemented with both a local and global vision. Long-term relational networks between stakeholders and the development of strategic consensus empower communities to gain critical awareness around the effects of transformations in the medium and long-term and at different spatial scales. This can promote the comparison and discussion of strategic alternatives and stimulate creative thinking, leading to unconventional or even utopian solutions. Through the collective project of utopian landscapes and shifting approaches from a logic of prediction to one of anticipation, and as the philosopher Luca Mori (2020) has recently shown, finding innovative solutions to familiar problems is possible (Fanzini and Rotaru 2018).

In light of the above considerations and objectives, the role of cultural institutions is internationally recognized (OECD and ICOM 2018; Brown 2019): they can facilitate community participation, increase social capital, promote and disseminate a culture of sustainability³ and empower stakeholders involved in decision-making processes, and finally, build ‘open cities and communities’ (Sennett 2018).

The global role of museums in leading the world on a path to a sustainable future has also been identified, notably through working to support the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (McGhie 2019; Brown 2019) and in particular action to fight climate change (McGhie 2020).

ICOM policies (Resolutions No. 1 and No. 5, adopted by the 34^th General Assembly in Kyoto in 2019)

‘recognize that all museums have a role to play in shaping and creating a sustainable future’. Resolution No. 5, entitled ‘Museums, Communities and Sustainability’, underlined the role of the ‘vast number of communityled organizations that do not currently fulfil the ICOM Definition of a Museum (2007) but that further the goals of safeguarding and promoting access to natural, cultural and intangible heritages and their sustainable use for environmental, social and economic development of communities, towards achievement of the UN 2030 goals and climate justice’.

Ecomuseums are specially placed to achieve such goals owing to their specific characteristics, and in particular their ability to empower communities (Davis 1999; Corsane 2006; de Varine, 2017). In this context, the actions and initiatives of ecomuseums in response to crises can be a source of inspiration. In fact, the in-depth knowledge gained from past experiences can aid in recovering both the collective memory of the community (Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch 2016) and the 'creativity of the Muses', forging a new public vision and creating consensus around development choices (Worts 2016). The increased engagement of museums with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Garlandini 2019) and their strong efforts toward overcoming the pandemic crisis (EULAC Foundation 2021) underline that they are at the forefront of a global drive for change. The EULAC museums project, which brings together European and South American community-based museums, is an emblematic example (Brown et al. 2019).

The role of ecomuseums in finding solutions to contemporary crises can be observed all over the world. More structured and significant examples include projects that have been promoted and shared through networking initiatives. This is the case of ecomuseums in Italy and Brazil.

Ecomuseums’ response to the Covid-19 crisis

In 2020, Brazil and Italy were among the countries most adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic had severe repercussions, mainly due to radical changes in economic models and lifestyles. Pandemic accelerated these changes because the processes of globalisation had already made obsolete the production models (Raworth 2017). The pandemic also diverted resources and attention from other emergencies, such as environmental issues linked to climate change; hydrogeological instability and the improper use of the territory; the prevention of risks from natural disasters; as well as socio-cultural crises such as inadequate access to social welfare services and digital technologies. The pandemic had dramatic repercussions for both the education of young people and adults.

Despite facing these and many other difficulties, ecomuseums and community museums in Brazil and Italy have continued their mission of empowering people to sustainably engage with living cultural heritage. These accomplishments have been possible due to the nature of ecomuseums and community museums as cultural institutions strongly rooted in local contexts. Ecomuseums foster stable relationships between local stakeholders, enhancing their resources. Moreover, rather than focussing on traditional collections to present to the public, ecomuseums’ identities and activities are anchored in and linked to the cultural heritage of a given place or community. For this reason, they have been better able to overcome the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and emphasise their social role in supporting and connecting community members. In particular, ecomuseums and community museums in Italy and Brazil deftly reacted to the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, experimenting with new models of public engagement, inspiration, and support to respond to local communities’ needs. We will return to this issue in more depth later in the article.

The ecomuseums of Brazil and Italy have fruitfully collaborated over the past decade (de Varine 2017). The partnership began in 2011 with a trip organized by Hugues de Varine, who accompanied several Brazilian ecomuseum directors on visits to Italian ecomuseums in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions. Other opportunities for exchange and discussion followed: in 2012 the 4^th International Meeting of Ecomuseums and Community Museums in Belém (Pará, Brazil) (Resende Martins 2012; ABREMC 2020) and in 2016 the Forum of Ecomuseums and Community Museums, held in Milan as part of the ICOM General Conference. The Forum showcased the highly interdisciplinary approach that characterises ecomuseums and distinguishes them from other cultural institutions. The cooperation charter ‘Ecomuseums and Cultural Landscape’ (Steering Committee 2016) was shared and signed in 2016, following the latter event.

The Charter formalised some of the following commitments: to create a permanent international working group on the theme of cultural landscapes; to create a scientific publication documenting ecomuseums’ potential for innovation in landscape design and in urban and territorial regeneration processes (Riva 2017); and to publish DROPS, a global platform enabling stakeholders to share and exchange experiences and good practices around the care of cultural heritage and local development.

In 2019, the DROPS working group collaborated to draft the aforementioned ICOM Resolution No. 5, ‘Museums, Communities and Sustainability’. It was submitted by ICOM Europe and ICOM LAC, and later approved by the ICOM general assembly in Kyoto.

The participating Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums played a promoting role in all these important international events and initiatives. The collaboration between ecomuseums in both countries was further strengthened in 2020 to respond to the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Associação Brasileira de Ecomuseu e Museus Comunitários (Brazilian Association of Ecomuseums and Community Museums, or ABREMC)⁴ and the Italian Ecomuseum Network (EMI)⁵ designed the cooperation charter ‘Distant but United. The Ecomuseums and Community Museums of Italy and Brazil’ (ABREMC and EMI 2020) to address and define ecomuseums’ responsibilities in a period of profound crisis.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of a consolidated local community network and a proximity economy in providing effective and rapid responses to emergencies. Ecomuseums contributed to strengthening this local community network, proposing solutions according to local needs and specifications; these often proved more effective than those offered by central government. During the Covid-19 pandemic and the long periods of social confinement or lockdown, the ecomuseums of Italy and Brazil established and fostered new sorts of relationships - largely virtual - to continue their collective work on community heritage.

During periods of lockdown and social distancing, ecomuseums carried out numerous activities. These included improving the digital accessibility of heritage, designing participatory inventories, fostering ‘proximity tourism’ based around virtual and self-guided tours, staging conferences, videos broadcasts and online creative workshops, ensuring the promotion, distribution and home delivery of local products, and carrying out actions of social solidarity at a local level (Rossi 2020).

Digital and virtual access to heritage

During periods of lockdown in 2020, the Casilino Ad Duas Lauros Ecomuseums (Italy)⁶ promoted its ‘narratives collection’ to maintain a relationship between local communities and their territory. Seminars online were organised; shared storytelling channels were published and workshops were held with schools, migrant communities and experts. The ecomuseum also offered community aid through fundraising, services for students and elderly people, including psychological support. These initiatives had a clear impact: online participation in the ecomuseum’s activities in 2020 was six times greater than physical visits to the museum were in 2019 (Cipullo 2020).

Lending support to communities

The Argenta Ecomuseum (Italy)⁷ promoted shopping vouchers for families experiencing economic hardship, collaborating with 22 local retailers. This ecomuseum is now reviewing its programme of initiatives, aiming to better address local people's needs following a period of lockdown. In addition, the Amazonia Ecomuseum (Brazil)⁸ implemented solidarity and mutual support projects to mitigate the effects of poverty within traditional riverside communities in Brazil during the pandemic.

Digital access to technology

The Alto Flumendosa Ecomuseum in Seulo (Italy)⁹ supported the local community during lockdown periods, and notably helped vulnerable and elderly people by deploying 30 volunteers to offer free shopping delivery services, in addition to aiding them in accessing digital technologies. The forced experience of home working due to the Covid-19 pandemic is now considered an opportunity for renewed growth and vitality in an Italian village that for years had been threatened by population declines due to economic factors, notably a lack of job opportunities.

Familial cultural heritage

In some cases, ecomuseums supported a deeper understanding of the material and immaterial aspects of family heritage, creating online spaces that might be likened to ‘home museums’ connected to the collective activities of the local ecomuseum. The ‘Acque del Gemonese’ Ecomuseum (Italy)¹⁰ invited community members to select old or 'forgotten' objects from their homes, collecting them in virtual 'showcases' that were shared and disseminated online. This and other similar projects both in Italy and in Brazil recovered many traditional practices, thereby preserving part of the community’s collective memory—one which had been at risk of disappearing.

Indigenous cultures

Particularly in Brazil, ecomuseums fostered opportunities for deepening understanding of problems and political issues that the Covid-19 pandemic amplified, for example issues affecting indigenous communities or minority groups that are oppressed by the dominant socioeconomic system and culture. The Brazilian Association of Ecomuseums and Community Museums (ABREMC) created the Community Museology Forum and Observatory to support heritage education and to disseminate and enhance the traditional knowledge and practices of the Quilombola (Afro-Brazilian citizens who are descendents of slaves), alongside those of indigenous communities, fishermen, and deprived suburban communities.

Social inclusion and micro-economies

The Campos de São José Ecomuseum (Brazil)¹¹ promoted the inclusion of low-income families through social, environmental, and economic activities such as community vegetable gardens and crafting workshops, all with an objective of enhancing local cultural heritage.

Education

During the pandemic the Maranguape Ecomuseum (Brazil)¹² improved its educational practices and initiatives. With the CONSIGO project (recipient of the Ibermuseos in Education 2020 Award) the museum involved students in the protection of local cultural heritage through the creation of a mobile phone application. This is the first initiative of its kind in community museology in Brazil.

The Ecomuseum Ilha Grande (Brazil) also offers an interesting case study. This institution is linked to the

Cultural Department of the Sub-Directorate of Extension and Culture of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Located in Vila Dois Rios, it is divided into four units: a multimedia center, prison museum, environment museum, and botanical park; each work in an integrated way for and with the wider community. During the pandemic the Ecomuseum was closed to the public, and none of the four units hosted any onsite activities.

However, by cleverly adapting their work practices, part of the Ecomuseum team carried out remote activities to continue certain ongoing projects, including an ‘Inventory of the historical, cultural and environmental heritage of Ilha Grande’. Other staff members maintained the Ecomuseum premises, which included watering the park's plants and cleaning interior rooms and exhibition spaces. 15 museum volunteers helped to carry out the remote activities. The Ecomuseum produced online content relating to Covid-19 pandemic prevention, the culture of the Caiçara (indigenous inhabitants of the coastal regions of southeastern and southern Brazil), marine biodiversity in the Ilha Grande Bay, fauna and flora from Ilha Grande, and the history and cultural memory of Ilha Grande prisons, alongside other projects and initiatives. The content was published on the museum’s social networks, and the museum also hosted livestreamed video conferences relating to the above topics.

Finally, the Ecomuseum Ilha Grande engaged in numerous community solidarity campaigns, not only providing health guidance tools to the general public, but also collecting funds to help communities in need. The UERJ University rectory maintained the employment of all its workers, but during the lockdown, its staff members did not receive salaries. Despite these financial constraints, the Ecomuseum continued to fulfil its role in the community, helping to bolster communities' resilience and enabling them to overcome problems and crises. It remains active to this day.

During the 2020 Italy-Brazil conferences, Ilha Grande ecomuseum Director Gelsom Rozentino underlined a need ‘to turn the crisis into an opportunity. There is no ready-made formula or instruction manual: each ecomuseum must find its own way. Just dare, be creative, do what you know well and, above all, be supportive’ (ABREMC and DROPS 2020).

International networking

The impact of ecomuseums’ responses to the pandemic crisis were not only registered at a local level. In fact, ecomuseums also promoted networking at an international level. They brought local issues to a higher level of discussion and experience: the mutual knowledge and analysis of solutions to the crisis; the impact assessment; the sharing of good and repeatable practices. In our opinion, this is the most important innovation because it introduced a different working method.

The drafting of the cooperation charter ‘Distant but United’ resulted from a participatory process, developed within the existing cooperation between the two ecomuseum networks. The process included a first phase of discussion that was followed by a more in-depth stage to highlight the peculiarities that distinguish Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums and community museums. Based on this in-depth analysis, a phase for defining the challenges and responsibilities of the partnership was then developed. The process continued with the drafting phase of the cooperation programme, which is now being implemented and monitored in terms of impacts.

The Brazilian Association of Ecomuseums and Community Museums (ABREMC) and the Italian Ecomuseum Network (EMI) held numerous meetings in 2020, first at a national level and later globally through the aforementioned DROPS international platform. On 25 June 2020, the first international meeting was held using videoconferencing systems. The meeting aimed at exchanging experiences and ideas relating to lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as focussing on the short-term prospects and strategies for reopening ecomuseums. The discussion concerned a few general questions, including the following: what has been achieved so far? What is the role of ecomuseums in making the positive changes triggered by the crisis permanent, and directing them towards integral and sustainable development?

The discussion also went beyond the theme of institutions reopening. It investigated what kind of support ecomuseums might offer during the pandemic and within the communities in which they operate; what sorts of initiatives they might take, where and how to initiate any planned actions, and how to anticipate future scenarios.

The meeting took place in both Portuguese and Italian. It began with the participation of Hugues de Varine and the new president of ICOM, Alberto Garlandini. EMI and ABREMC network delegates continued the meeting by discussing general interest topics. Finally, representatives from both regional networks and single ecomuseums-- including 11 Brazilians and 11 Italians—related their own experiences and answered questions from fellow participants. Presentations and speeches were subtitled in both Italian or Portuguese and English to facilitate understanding. In addition, representatives from both networks transcribed the reports from the first international meeting.

The written report— and the subsequent communications and debates held at national levels— were useful in better defining the many distinctive elements that reflected the experiences of the participants and their regional and national networks. The reports and communications also allowed ecomuseums to identify a common vision, built around the challenges and responsibilities that might be discussed, accepted and adopted by both national groups, as reference points for joint future actions. A first draft of the joint cooperation charter—written and published in both Italian and Portuguese— was shared with ecomuseums and community museums, as well as with their partners and collaborators around the world, through the DROPS platform.

Different national approaches

The cooperation charter first outlines the methods and operating principles that distinguish the two national ecomuseum networks and their different approaches. Since these approaches are not shared, the cooperation charter recognises the distinctive nature and management of ecomuseums in Italy and Brazil, respectively.

Italian ecomuseums are characterised by the wide diffusion of ‘communities of practice’¹³, the involvement of municipal administrations in museum policy, regional legislation regulating ecomuseums, heritage inventorying realised in partnership with the community (i.e. parish maps), the monitoring of results by regions and provinces and subsidiary cooperation agreements (i.e. with government authorities with responsibility over river, lakes and seas). In addition, the cultural landscape and the role of the community in its definition and care are key concepts for Italian ecomuseums (Dal Santo 2017).

By contrast, Brazilian ecomuseums respond to very different social problems, owing to a local context that is quite different to Italy’s. These ecomuseums primarily frame their identities around political orientations, the importance of ethnic and religious factors, as well as the enhancement of communities through the direct participation of their members. The Brazilian ecomuseums’ core concepts are community capacitação (empowerment) and its role both in the enhancement of cultural diversity and the construction of better and fairer living conditions for all (Duarte Cândido 2012).

Challenges and responsibilities

Next, the Cooperation charter highlights the challenges ecomuseums have faced during the pandemic, as well as outlining their responsibilities. This section of the charter also clearly highlights the profound differences between the two national groups. On the one side, Italian ecomuseums recognised their responsibilities as follows:

- to locally support and promote social relationships;

- to reduce the infrastructure-based and unequal access to digital cultural resources that is often responsible for the marginalisation of many citizens and stakeholders;

- to take full advantage of digital systems and tools;

- to make permanent the positive changes triggered by the pandemic, and in particular, fostering safer and more resilient communities;

- to promote a sustainable and circular economy aimed at the integral development of disadvantaged people in particular, including the elderly;

- to recognise and promote the cultural landscape as a common assets that must be used and inhabited in a sustainable way;

- to care for cultural heritage as is expressed through particular traditions, social relations, the sense and identity of places linked to the relationship between people and spatial settings, and to confirm the importance of cultural heritage as a development resource;

- to sponsor local products (e.g. foods), enhance their production chains, and distribute them through ecomuseum initiatives

- to bolster the centrality of territories and the added value of urban peripheries;

- To foster closer relationships within ecomuseums and community museums by promoting values of courage, ethical innovation, social commitment and responsibility.

Brazilian ecomuseums , meanwhile, defined their own set of key responsibilities based on the vision and values of ABREMC:

- to share and defend the rights of native peoples, promote gender equality, agrarian reform, improve access to healthy food, and promote free, high-quality secular public education;

- to respect Brazilian forests and the environment in all its forms, promote human and social emancipation and help to end all forms of imperialism and neoliberal capitalist excess and violence;

- to consider community museology as a key concept in implementing the main conventions addressing the relationships between communities, territories and cultural heritage (e.g. the Mesa Santiago del Chile, 1972 and the Quebec Declaration, 1984); to facilitate access to knowledge of social history and to discourage the commodification of community heritage;

- to invite new museums to follow the principles of local community museology, and to encourage staff training in this area;

- to promote museums as a tool for social change and the enhancement of cultural heritage, particularly through learning and the exchange of knowledge;

- to welcome, support and disseminate projects, actions and campaigns in defence of secularism;

- to empower communities through museographic initiatives based on the direct participation of their members;

- to support ecomuseums and community museums in strengthening the community museology movement; consider the importance of community participation, self-management; to encourage the active and creative role of community members; and to defend the environment and cultural heritage;

- to promote dialogue with other types of national museums and with various cultural institutions, including public authorities at all levels.

The detailed identification of challenges and responsibilities for institutions in Italy and Brazil highlights the specificities of ecomuseums and community museums in both countries. In Italy, protection of the cultural landscape and cultural heritage is seen as key to promoting local development and optimal enhancement of resources. Education, community empowerment and the awareness of the importance of defending social rights prevail in Brazil.

The creation of stable networks of participation between stakeholders and the integration of living heritage into sustainable development processes are common values shared between both national ecomuseum networks. The cooperation charter made these different knowledge and skills available to each network, thus potentially improving the effectiveness of proposed actions.

Strategies and actions

Drawing on a common vision, challenges and responsibilities, a ten-year cooperation programme and an annual action calendar were approved. They include seven strategic lines of intervention (exchanging, welcoming, publishing, training, inviting, organising, communicating and monitoring). Each strategic line is divided into general long-term actions; these are further divided into specific short-term actions, with specifications for who will implement them and the timing of the implementation.

Table 1. Long and short-term programmes of the Ecomuseum Cooperative Charter (please find it in the PDF version)

The cooperation charter contains two annexes. Italian ecomuseums attached their Strategic Manifesto (Dal Santo et al. 2017). The Strategic Manifesto is conceived as an open and evolving document to explain the key principles of Italian ecomuseology. it highlights the centrality of communities in the work of Italian ecomuseums, and identifies the landscape as the primary focus of their activities. The Manifesto also identifies priorities for action in a short and medium-term programmatic agenda.

Brazilian ecomuseums, meanwhile, attached detailed descriptions of national specificities and the ecomuseums involved in the charter-designing process; the annex highlighted its consistency with the principles expressed by Hugues de Varine about the sustainable and community-based use of the heritage for the local development (de Varine 2002). The draft of the charter was subsequently disseminated through the DROPS international platform. Preliminary global subscriptions and suggestions were solicited by the Italian and Brazilian networks.

A second international meeting: approving and implementing the charter

On 26 November 2020, the second international meeting took place via videoconference. Among others, Hugues de Varine and ICOM President Alberto Garlandini were present. The meeting was aimed at discussing and approving the Cooperation charter and sharing strategies for its implementation. It also focused on the design of a short-term agenda that was approved with a calendar of actions for 2021. A monitoring system to track results obtained is to initially be implemented at national levels, then later at a bilateral level. Through processes of debate and questioning, participating ecomuseums will monitor the impacts of the cooperation charter. They will also consolidate or modify the agenda for long-term actions and define a calendar of shortterm actions for 2022.

Preliminary results and prospects for development

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted profound structural crises within our societies. Prior to the pandemic, ecomuseums around the world were active protagonists in empowering people to direct the sustainable use of community heritage towards integral development, applying a holistic and systemic vision. The pandemic and prolonged lockdowns prevented certain ecomuseum activities from continuing, and in particular curtailed accessibility to heritage sites. To respond to the needs of their communities of reference, ecomuseums favoured local social, economic and cultural networks, applying updated and strengthened solutions and strategies developed for specific territories. This local and territorial dimension, organised through networks centred around specific neighbourhoods and villages represented a strategic reference for responding to community difficulties during the pandemic.

During a period of intense crisis, ecomuseums in both Italy and Brazil empowered and fostered social relationships, promoted a sense of place (e.g. through cultural heritage sites and producers of local food), put the peripheries at the centre by offering more support to disadvantaged communities and strengthened the resilience of local communities. At the same time, they consolidated a sense of community and contributed to the development the collective imagination, thus also exercising creativity to seek unconventional solutions to new challenges posed by the Covid-19 crisis. Participating ecomuseums in both countries agree that community participation in the initiatives proposed during the pandemic was high, as evidenced by user feedback and online access which have increased significantly compared to pre-pandemic levels (ABREMC and DROPS 2020). However, with the exception of a few cases, the impact of local actions initiated through the charter has not yet been investigated. This represents an area for further development.

The cooperation charter forged between the ecomuseums and community museums of Italy and Brazil represents a contribution of both countries’ respective institutions to ongoing debates on the challenges of the present and the future: one that museums are currently engaged in on a global level. Ecomuseums accepted the challenge of the pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen solidarity and social relations, and to chart inspiring future pathways by enacting permanent strategic changes in the present.

Methodological and cultural changes

As part of the cooperation charter, actions and methods were tested, albeit at a distance and in compliance with lockdown restrictions, to support and connect local communities and ecomuseums with one another and to regional, national and global networks. The cooperation charter is, accordingly, the result of a renewed awareness of the need to act locally and think globally. The document was designed through remote meetings and adopted informally as a work-in-progress tool that is constantly evolving. Such remote working methods allowed for the sharing of experiences, as well as collaboration with isolated individuals and ecomuseums who do not generally have the opportunity or capacity to travel and attend meetings. Meanwhile, museums around the world are rethinking and strengthening relationships with their communities. Through the cooperation charter, the ecomuseums and community museums of Italy and Brazil recognised the advantages they held, particularly since they address specific territories and work with local communities. During the Covid-19 pandemic and periods of lockdown, ecomuseums in both countries facilitated local participation and intercultural dialogue, increased interaction with communities and support for sustainable local development.

Through the cooperation charter, the ecomuseums of Italy and Brazil further expressed and confirmed the will to continue working together, recognising that:

1. The differences between the two national contexts foster mutual enrichment: while the Brazilian context emphasises community empowerment and education, Italian ecomuseums emphasise the sustainable management of heritage, and in particular local landscapes.

2. To solve the contemporary crises faced by ecomuseums, new models of management are needed. These models should depart in significant ways from those that helped create the crises in the first place. In the domain of economics, the aforementioned ‘doughnut economy’ might represent a valid alternative to the traditional neoliberal capitalism model.

3. The SDGs represent the greatest and most 'global' effort to realise the changes necessary for creating a sustainable future for humans and the Earth; they were designed as inter-dependent objectives, and it is only through comprehensive changes in global goals that we can shift the negative impacts of our cultural status quo;

4. Constant commitment is required to advance goal no. 17, ‘Partnerships for the Goals’, which aims at creating a sustainable future through the joint action of countries and communities, and through a renewed global partnership for sustainable development.

The cooperation charter continues a decade-long collaboration between Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums. However, what it does differently is formalise and identify key themes and strategic lines for development, as well as 10-year commitments for the implementation of an articulated cooperation programme and an annual calendar of promoted actions. The charter reflects on ecomuseums and community museums' role in promoting a transition towards the creation of resilient communities, able to renew themselves and respond effectively and sustainably to contemporary crises.

Conclusion: critical issues and future perspectives

The participation process promoted by Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums contributed to fostering the methodological, cultural, and material changes described above. It also represents an empowerment tool for ecomuseums which, consequently, can produce, in the long term, structural social changes that affect both communities and local political and administrative authorities.

The work of the Cooperation charter has been carried out mainly by the two national networks with the broad cooperation and engagement of their respective ecomuseums. An effective and lasting process is necessary through the widespread sharing of the charter principles in Italy and Brazil. The involvement of both local communities and external institutions which are not represented by the two networks will yield local benefits through international cooperation.

Overall, the process of creating the cooperation charter revealed many critical issues. The informality of the network and voluntary nature of its management— as well as the extensive use of remote communication systems—required a new sort of participation that the two national groups of ecomuseums had not previously experienced. The joint effort is one that continues to evolve. The significant differences between national ecomuseum networks in Italy and Brazil prompted renewed interest in each getting to know each other and to collaborate, but also underlines difficulty in synthesising and moving past the distinct visions of the two groups. One example of such a difficulty can be drawn from the 50^th annual ecomuseology celebration programme that both countries are carrying out in 2021 to great profit. Owing to the different visions of the Italian and Brazilian ecomuseum networks, a single common event was staged: the conference ‘Ecomuseums and climate action’ held in September 2021 as part of the satellite events of the Pre-COP26 in Milan (Italy) a pre-conference ahead of the main climate conference in Glasgow. Speakers from Europe and America focused on the role of ecomuseums and community museums in achieving 2030 SDGs and meaningful climate action. The 2030 development goals could therefore also form objectives around which to develop future work.

The participation process therefore now requires effective governance that allows for the coordination of activities, the monitoring of results, and the revision and updating of strategies based on new needs that may emerge.

Finally, an EU-funded research programme will soon be carried out in Italy by an ABREMC researcher. It will attempt to respond to these critical issues, while Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums will continue to build a relationship between two worlds that are at once quite distant, yet united by a common goal of responding to the contemporary crises, all with the aim of promoting the integral development of local communities and the planet.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the colleagues who contributed to the elaboration of the ‘Distant but United’ cooperation charter. Special thanks to Hugues de Varine and Alberto Garlandini for their theoretical and practical support towards sustaining a constantly growing network of Italian and Brazilian ecomuseums.

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Notes

¹ We refer to the concept of cultural heritage that emerges from the ‘Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (UNESCO 2003) and from the ‘Framework Convention on the value of cultural heritage for society’ (Council of Europe 2005): an evolving heritage, which contributes to sustainable development and to increasing the quality of life of the communities that identify with it; a heritage to be transmitted to future generations but also to be renewed and adapted to changing contexts and the needs of communities.

² That is: it reaches the deliberative phase of the process and its realisation through the empowerment of citizens.

³ We define ‘sustainability’ as a dynamic balance between the demands of environmental protection, social equity, and economic development.

⁴ The Associação Brasileira de Ecomuseu and Museus Comunitários (ABREMC) is an association founded in 2004. Its mission is to foster creation, strengthening, support and dissemination of ecomuseums, community museums and similar processes. It works for social, community and sustainable development, culture and education and the enhancement of cultural heritage as an instrument of social emancipation. https://abremc.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

⁵ The Network of Italian Ecomuseums (EMI) is an informal community of practice founded in 2015; it is open to all ecomuseums that share the 2016 Strategic Manifesto. It promotes virtuous models and tools of sustainable local development. https://sites.google.com/view/ecomuseiitaliani/home [Accessed 27 October 2021].

⁶ https://www.ecomuseocasilino.it/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

⁷ https://www.vallidiargenta.org/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

⁸ http://ecomuseuamazonia.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

⁹ https://www.ecomuseoseulo.com/. [Accessed 27 October 2021].

¹⁰ http://www.ecomuseodelleacque.it/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

¹¹ http://ecomuseusjc.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

¹² https://ecomuseudemaranguape.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 27 October 2021].

¹³ A community of practice is a group of people who work together to fulfill shared goals about common issues and through shared practices and methods.