INHERITED SPACE OF ACTIVE PARTICIPATION: A VILLAGE IN ABRUZZO, A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH, AN ECO-MUSEUM,

Cocullo, a small village facing socio-economic challenges, is - through collaboration with anthropologists - is renewing values of the local heritage according to a universalistic and global perspective. This cultural transformation is embedded with the creation of an ecomuseum focused on the village’s unique ritual—the procession of St. Dominic with snakes. Additionally, the municipality aims to inscribe this ritual on UNESCO’s list for the protection of intangible cultural heritage. This cultural mediation between traditions and innovations is the result of a three-decade collaborative ethnography by anthropologists studying the social functions and meanings of the rite of St. Dominic Abbot with the snakes. From a cultural perspective, the ritual of Cocullo represents a cultural diversity and a biodiversity, whose traditional culture helps safeguard the natural milieu, despite appearances to the contrary. This “heritagization process” is the fruit of the forty-year alliance between the anthropologists and the local community which has invested its resources in the study and reflection on the most emblematic of its traditions: the religious procession of St. Dominic with the snakes. The village’s “reflexive turn” led to the municipality launching the ecomuseum in 2004. Over twenty years, nearly two hundred events - training meetings, decisional meetings, international conferences and presentations - have taken place there.The ecomuseum, therefore, serves as a public attraction alongside the ritual itself. By reinforcing ties with an ancient devotional network of Apennine villages that today share values of environmental respect and traditional devotion, the community hopes to gain support from regional, national, and international institutions.