ENABLE MADONIE is the eighth edition of the itinerant Summer School promoted by the Laboratorio del Cammino (LdC), an inter-university network of researchers that develops research and teaching projects aimed at exploring the possibilities of walking in urban planning and design. The goal of this eighth edition is to understand how walking, seeing, listening, and slowly and deeply entering places are essential practices for cultivating an “alternative gaze” on inner peripheral areas—one capable of going beyond statistical normalization and stereotypes about “peripherality”.

Accompanied by professors, researchers, residents, and local actors, students will be guided to produce a place-based knowledge that is situated, plural, and co-produced in the Inner Area of the Madonie. This will involve hybridizing methodologies and forms of knowledge to critically and constructively reflect on new forms of interaction between humans and nature unfolding along the mountain ridge. Through the lens of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), participants will be encouraged to explore the values that connect people and nature within the area’s socio-ecological system. They will produce both relevant technical descriptions and conceptual maps of space in relational terms—highlighting conflicts and resistances, assembling data and perceptions, fragments and ferments of transformation.

 

The Summer School will take place from August 25 to September 4, 2025, and will consist of a walking journey across the territory, starting from Geraci Siculo and arriving in Cefalù (Palermo). A path from the "bone lands" of the Madonie hinterland to the "flesh territories" (Rossi Doria, 1958) of the Tyrrhenian coast, where participants will experience that “descending history” (Calvino, 1946) which has marginalized mountain-rural areas—bringing into question both the prevailing economic-cultural model and the alternative imaginaries produced along the route.

 

To apply, please send by Friday, June 6, 2025 an academic CV, a motivation letter, and two projects representative of your academic carrier, to the following email address: laboratoriodelcammino@gmail.com.