PROJECT OVERVIEW
Proposal of a case study for the interactive media design project:
- Proponent: Michela Parma
- Name of the element: Tradition of rust printing on fabric.
- Name of communities / groups / individuals concerned: People of Romagna.
- Geographical location and distribution: All areas of Romagna: from Forlì-Cesena to Ravenna, from Santarcangelo to Rimini.
- Domains represented by the element: According to the text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible CulturalHeritage, rust printing is located in the section E of the article no. 2: traditional craftsmanship.
- Identification and definition of the element: The article no. 2 of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage state that: the intangible cultural heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.
- Today rust printing on fabric is an art practiced only by very few artisans and its social role is minimal compared to what it once had. Nowadays many people do not know this type of craft, or have vaguely heard of it. It is also important to mention that the production of rust prints suffered the damage of industrialization. In fact, there are souvenir shops, especially on the Romagna Riviera, which sell non-original prints, industrially produced, which obviously damage the great work of craftsmanship of local artisans.
- What characterizes every printer is the attention to detail and the extraordinary ability to print the fabric, each different from the other, through a knowledge that is handed down from father to son, jealously guarded in the shops. In fact, every printer has a very personal recipe for the creation of colors and a particular wood-carving technique for molds.
- Today, the only system of transmission of rust printing is thanks to the work of MET - Museo Etnografico degli Usi e Costumi della gente di Romagna which organized, before the closure for renewal in September 2017, educational workshops designed ad hoc for kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school.
- Need for urgent safeguarding: Despite the creation of the Associazione Stampatori Tele Romagnole, which includes some printers scattered in Romagna, rust printing needs a promotion and preservation plan of higher quality than what has been done so far. Such an ancient, important and fascinating tradition must be the heritage of everyone, especially of all the people of Romagna. Everyone should have the opportunity to know how these masterpieces are made and maybe be able to experience it in person. The tradition of rust printing is at risk because it is not a shared heritage, on the contrary, the craftsmen jealously guard the secrets for the realization of the prints and it is difficult to get to know them. Also, this tradition is at risk because there are many souvenir shops on the Riviera selling counterfeit industrial products that obviously damage the value of the craftsmen's manual work. It is important to develop people's awareness of the long process of creating rust printings and the high manufacturing quality that distinguishes each piece.
- Safeguarding measures: The art of rust printing is a tradition that is difficult to cultivate at home, for this reason it is necessary to identify an area where the community of Romagna can learn and experience this art. First of all, I believe that the transmission of the existence of this practice is of fundamental importance. The MET - Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente di Romagna, which is in Santarcangelo di Romagna (RN), reserves a room in the museum for the art of weaving hemp fabric with looms and the subsequent decoration of the fabric with rust printing. Unfortunately, visitors cannot touch the tools of these works, so I thought of creating an area reserved exclusively for rust printing where visitors can learn through different tools: a cinema where a digital animation short film on the history of rust printing is shown, followed by a laboratory with several stations, both for children and adults, where visitors can experiment manually with the art of printing on fabric by printing on white t-shirts provided by the museum (included in the entrance ticket) through moulds designed to be used much more frequently than wooden ones, with an ink designed to resist washing. The final goal is to make visitors feel part of their own tradition, learning while having fun and sharing the experience. that allow them to play with the shapes and colors of traditional printing, both digital and manual.
- Community participation: This project aims to give new vigour to the rust printing by creating a large community of users in the Romagna area, but also, and above all, attract new tourists from the surrounding areas. In this way the museum will have a great participation for the preservation and handing down of rust printing.
- Inclusion in Inventory: Rust printing is not yet included in any inventory, but I suppose it could be included in the inventory of the PACI Project. The Progetto integrato per il Patrimonio Culturale Immateriale e la Diversità Culturale PACI is based on the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Paris, 2003) and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Expressions of Cultural Diversity (Paris, 2005), ratified by Italy in 2007. It is coordinated by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD) and shared by the Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi (ICBSA) and the Istituto Centrale per la Demoetnoantropologia (IDEA).
The aim of the project is to contribute to increasing the knowledge of the Italian intangible cultural heritage through the reconnaissance and recovery of previous catalogues and new cataloguing activities in the field, with the aim of creating a database aimed at implementing and integrating the catalographic and multimedia documentation of the three Central Institutes in relation to the Italian regional territories.
