Veneto Comunità Itinerante

Walking for discovering, walking for comprehend

Walking: a subversive act

This is the view of Erling Kagge – explorer, writer and climber. Norwegian, class 1963, he was the first person to reach the three terrestrial poles on foot: North Pole, South Pole and Mount Everest.

In his book Walking: one step at a time, Kagge underlines how in modern society walking has become a subversive act, a way of opposing the constant search for speed, productivity, frenzy: these, especially from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, have been the goals of many societies. But the right to slowness, the reappropriation of certain rhythms and spaces is increasingly emerging as a necessity in contrast with these ideals.

The project

As we have seen for Sepúlveda’s The Story of a Snail Who Discovered the Importance of Being Slow, dedicating time to relationships between people is the key to a true, profound and sincere encounter.

Walking therefore becomes the action that allows you to slow down and to (re)take the time necessary to know and reflect through dialogue and direct sharing with local people: in this way it is possible to better understand people, situations and territories.

And it is from these premises that projects such as Veneto Comunità Itinerante (Veneto Itinerant Community) are born.

Veneto Itinerant Community develops from the Oltrevia’s School of Policies, a workshop of political, environmental and socio-cultural training formed in Bassano del Grappa in 2020. The idea behind Oltrevia is to deal with environmental and social justice issues from various points of view, while also focusing on the reality of the city.

The project is one of the results (or Mestieri, i.e. jobs in the Venetian dialect) that arises from the desire to translate the needs acquired by the School into concrete projects of action on the territory: for this reason, a route that touches all seven provinces of the Veneto was created. In this way it becomes possible, as Rocco Paolin tells us during the interview, «to recover the spaces that are lost with speed».

The target is the young population, but not only: as Bernardo Bortolan points out, the journey has the purpose of getting to know associations, farms, movements and much more that care about the environment and social justice, and therefore it is suitable to all people interested in these topics.

The desire to create a network between different realities of the region makes it necessary to know all its provinces as well.

The first edition took place in three weeks. Starting at the end of August 2022 from Bassano del Grappa (from Villa Angaran San Giuseppe, home of various projects including Oltrevia), the journey then continued to Belluno, Treviso, Venice and finally Padua. This year, at the end of August, the second edition will resume from Padua to go to Vicenza and Verona, then returning to Bassano del Grappa to close the circle. Before Padua, a section will be added that connects Venice and Padua via Rovigo, lengthening last year’s route and thus allowing it to cover all the provinces.

Last year realities such as the Belluno anti-violence center were involved and, in the Euganean Hills, there was a meeting with the naturalist Toni Mazzetti.

“Walking we will rediscover a slow pace, which will allow us to reflect and observe the territories we will cross with different eyes, giving us time to listen to stories and reflect on a constantly changing landscape, transformed by overbuilding and industrialization but full of suggestive views and hidden beauties” reads the website of the route.

Chance encounters with people on the street, discovering similarities and differences with other regional realities, learning about the difficulties of a place and how they have been (or have not been) resolved become a community experience. And ends in getting to know sides that otherwise would have been difficult to meet: thus, as Anna Gozzi tells us, gives time to discover an elderly gentleman who is making a welcoming fridge in Marghera for storing books and creating a small open-air public library in it.

Walking for comprehend

Always on the wave of the latest news and productivity, the modern society in which we find ourselves often collides with slowness and its apparent waste of time.

Veneto Comunità Itinerante tries to oppose this vision, putting dialogue between people at the centre. A direct, in person dialogue that allows you to interact, without the rush given by tight schedules.

An extra chat, a collective lunch longer than usual thus become small actions that allow you not to feel tied to time, but rather put the turning hands in second place to focus on what is important: the meeting.

Step by step, stop by stop, you choose not to embrace a fast and efficient journey – such as going by train or car – in order to embrace one that is more difficult in some respects, but which allows you to understand the territory and its people.

This can also spread into everyday life, outside the three weeks of the journey. Choosing to prioritize meetings and reflections rather than the passing of time may seem like a luxury, but it can also be seen as a way to practice deep, long-term sustainability, being aware that the ideas of perennial speed, of growth continuous and constant ability to perform are nothing but a utopia daughter of the search for progress.

For further information:
Email: venetocomunitaitinerante@oltrevia.it
Whatsapp: + 39 3426403461

Instagram: @venetocomunitaitinerante

Matilde Spagnolo

Graduated in Environmental Humanities (Unive) and Natural Sciences (Unipd). Passionate about ethology, she works as an environmental educator and joined Atmosphera Lab as Social Media and writer in 2022.