The Granaries of Memory
The strategic research project Granaries of Memory (link to https://www.granaidellamemoria.it/) is a scientific path, whose purpose is to collect in video the memories of the world and make them accessible thanks to an online archive.
The memories narrated by the people who guard them. They have the will not only to narrate the past, but to be a precious tool to interpret the present and imagine the future.
The name of the project in fact, borrowed from the farming world, represents this reserve that is needed to face the months without harvest.
The interviews collected, rebuild small universes and thanks to a careful cataloguing (by place, years and themes covered), You can navigate and structure your search feature. An open database accessible to all, consistently, with the vocation of the project.
The current sections are implemented thanks to the support of foundations, local administrations and other research institutes and this has allowed to get more than 1000 videos from 54 different countries on different themes, from the Mediterranean to Cuneo’s agriculture, from food and health to Slow Food Presidia producers around the world.
Supporting this strategic research means, contributing to the maintenance and growth of this immeasurable assets, at risk of disappearance. In addition, the Project’s partners will have the possibility to agree with the team research about the creation of an archive, dedicated to one’s own reality or to a particularly theme.
This research, becomes an anthropological tool, for the narration of a place and its traditions, useful e.g. for museums, tourism promotion companies and foundations in support of the area, or for companies, who want, through the memory of employees, owners or customers, to define their roots and trace their own identity.
“Today the culture of tradition seems to be endangered, threatened by a world that seeks desperately forget the past. For over a decade our research group collects testimonies from rural communities to prevent them from being dispersed. Once there was oral memory to ensure the transmission of this heritage. Today you need real granaries to fight the famine of ideas, to counter the dominant and homologated culture that has taken away the voice of knowledge ,precious to our old ones. I don’t want to leave these battles to others. We must all together defend the biodiversity of cultures. On the other hand to save ethno diversity means to participate actively to the indispensable preservation of biodiversity.”
Carlo Petrini
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