The complexity of landscape ideas and the issue of landscape democracy in school and non-formal education: exploring pedagogical practices in Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Landscape-related pedagogical initiatives present a multifaceted panorama of assumptions, approaches and goals, with some contradictions and commonalities. They reflect, on one hand, the theoretical ambiguity and inherent tensions of the concept of landscape itself and, on the other hand, the different institutional approaches to landscape management. This paper discusses the results of a national survey conducted in Italy on landscape-related initiatives in non-professional education. Five landscape ideas on which educational projects are grounded emerged from the analysis: ‘anthropic and lived landscape’, ‘perceived and green landscape’, ‘landscape as an arena’, ‘heritage landscape’ and ‘natural landscape’. This diversity proves the need for theoretical frameworks and methodological tools in educational contexts to address the complexity of landscape through an insightful reading. In particular, we focus on the ‘landscape as an arena’ idea and explore its limits and potentialities in relation to the debate on landscape power and democracy.