Paper Short Abstract:

This contribution critically compares industrial narratives in deindustrialised towns in Norway and a former textile district in Italy. We explore how children learn about heritage and the role of cultural welfare projects, highlighting two distinct approaches to industrial heritage in different European contexts.

Paper Abstract:

How do communities learn about the local industrial heritage? In this presentation we wish to do a comparison between Audhild Kennedy’s findings on how children learn about local heritage in Rjukan and Notodden, two deindustrialised towns in southeastern Norway, and Manuela Vinai’s ethnography of cultural welfare projects held in Valdilana, a region in a deindustrialised textile district in the northwest of Italy. In our presentation we wish to reflect on how communities learn about the local industrial heritage and to un-write the industrial ‘heritage’ fairy tales and reinterpret these narratives. We focus on our ethnography from our fieldwork in Italy and Norway to challenge conventional perspectives and practices. Moreover, we want to explore how fostering a dialogue between Notodden and Valdilana as we believe such a comparison can highlight how studies on deindustrialisation can pave the way for a new narrative of industrial pasts. In her empirical examples from Notodden, Norway, Audhild Kennedy shows how a UNESCO inscription seems to strip the World Heritage site off its potential multivocality by processes that standardise the industrial narrative to take the shape of an industrial fairy tale, and thus restricting children’s potential futures. Whereas Manuela Vinai uses her ethnography to illustrate how Biella's industrialists, drawing on the tradition of spiritual solidarity, continue to uphold the symbolic role of caring for the territory and its inhabitants.