Bringing contemporary art into dialogue with places and people
Founded in 2008 in the Pollino National Park in Southern Italy, ArtePollino explores the relationship between contemporary art, landscape and local communities. Through artistic projects, site-specific installations, educational activities and encounters with artists, it creates opportunities to experience the territory in new ways and to reflect on the relationships between people, places and the environment.
At the heart of ArtePollino is the belief that art can open up new perspectives on the places we inhabit. The landscape is not simply a setting for artistic interventions, but a living context shaped by natural processes, cultural heritage, local knowledge, memories and everyday experiences. By bringing artists into dialogue with this context, ArtePollino invites residents and visitors to look beyond what is familiar and discover new meanings in the territory.
Art as an ongoing relationship with the territory
ArtePollino’s work extends beyond the creation of individual artworks. It develops over time through a sustained presence in the villages of the Pollino area and through relationships with local communities, schools and cultural and educational stakeholders.
Particular attention is given to people who live in these places, including those who have chosen to stay and build their futures in a rural area often described in terms of marginality and depopulation. Their experiences, knowledge and relationship with the landscape are an essential part of the territory’s identity and of the questions that contemporary art can help bring to light.
Through educational programmes, workshops and opportunities to meet artists, ArtePollino creates spaces for curiosity, exchange and discovery. These activities encourage children, young people and adults to engage with contemporary artistic practices, explore their surroundings and develop their own ways of interpreting the places they know.
Learning to see familiar places differently
Education is a central dimension of ArtePollino’s approach. Encounters with artists and their work become starting points for observation, dialogue, experimentation and shared learning. By connecting artistic languages with the natural and cultural environment, educational activities encourage participants to ask questions, challenge established perceptions and discover possibilities that might otherwise remain unseen.
This process is not simply about transmitting knowledge or making art more accessible. It is also about creating the conditions for people to develop their own perspectives, connect personal experiences with broader questions and recognise the landscape as a shared space of relationships, memories and possibilities.
The encounter with art thus becomes an encounter with other ways of seeing. An artist’s perspective can open up new interpretations of a familiar place, while the experiences and knowledge of local people enrich the meanings that emerge from the work. Through these exchanges, art becomes a shared opportunity to observe, question and rediscover the territory.
Art, landscape and the possibility of staying
Working in a rural and protected area also means engaging with questions about the future of local communities. In territories often described through the language of remoteness, depopulation or marginality, ArtePollino creates opportunities to recognise their cultural richness, complexity and potential.
By bringing contemporary art into dialogue with local life, the project helps expand access to cultural experiences beyond major cities and conventional cultural institutions. It also creates occasions for people to meet, exchange ideas and reconsider the value of the places they inhabit.
Art does not offer simple solutions to the challenges facing rural territories. Its contribution lies in its capacity to generate questions, stimulate imagination, make relationships visible and create new ways of understanding a place and one’s relationship with it. For those who have chosen to stay, these cultural experiences can also open up spaces for reflection on belonging, local identity and the possibilities of living and creating in their own territory.
Art as a way of connecting people and places
ArtePollino offers an approach to territorial engagement in which artistic production, education, environmental awareness and long-term relationships with local communities are closely interconnected.
Its experience shows that the relationship between art and territory cannot be reduced to the presence of artworks in a landscape. It also develops through the processes that surround them: encounters with artists, educational experiences, conversations with residents and the gradual discovery of new perspectives on familiar places.
For EU-COM-E, ArtePollino offers a valuable example of how contemporary art can foster meaningful relationships between people and their environments. Its practice highlights the importance of continuity, education and local presence in cultural engagement, recognising that new ways of seeing a territory can emerge through shared experiences, encounters with artistic practices and the everyday lives of those who choose to inhabit it.
Location: Pollino National Park, Basilicata, Southern Italy
