Between December 2025 and January 2026, the first two lessons of the School for Village Hosts Arvier were held, a training course within the pilot project “Agile Arvier. The culture of change” is aimed at those who work in Arvier and in the municipalities of Alta Valle – between Aosta and Courmayeur. The course does not aim to teach tourism or provide ready-made solutions, but to work on strategic skills: critical reading of the context, integrated planning, construction of imaginaries, territorial storytelling, and community activation.
The School for Village Hosts Arvier is not an isolated experience, but the natural evolution of a broader process of reflection and experimentation that began in 2021 with theOpen School for Village Hostsa project developed as part of the Erasmus+ Programme with various European partners (Casa Netural, MateraHub, Elisava, Holis, Centre for Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship, Kobiety Lodz and Radosa Partneriba).
At a time when inland areas often remain on the margins of the main circuits of social innovation and sustainable development, the Open School has chosen to work on a crucial issue: strengthening local capacities to understand the complexity of places, activate transformative processes, and construct narratives capable of bringing together identity, the present, and a vision for the future.
The first two lessons, “Understanding the territory and designing opportunities” and “Telling the story of the territory: stories, emotions, identity”, accompanied the 24 participants on a journey that first led to recognising and interpreting the resources of the territory, and then to exploring ways of telling its story as a tool for imagining and building the future.
Reading the territory: from diagnosis to vision
How can we read a territory without simplifying or distorting it? This was the question that guided the first lesson.
The answer came through the paradigm of integrated territorial enhancement, introduced by Andrea Porta of Santagata Foundation as a strategic approach to local development, particularly relevant for inland areas.
In this model, the territory is not a container of resources to be exploited, but an ecosystem of interconnected capitals – cultural, environmental, social, and economic – that requires contextual, participatory, and long-term planning. The competitive advantage, especially in mountain contexts, lies not in standardisation, but in the ability to interpret the local context while avoiding extractive and fragile models.
Territorial planning was presented as a structured and progressive process:
- Analysis of territorial capital: existing resources, actors, and dynamics;
- Analysis of needs and definition of objectives;
- Definition of strategy;
- Definition of actions and tools;
- Monitoring and evaluation.
It became clear that effective projects are not based on isolated actions, but on coherent strategies that integrate training, heritage, services, experiences, and communication, supported by clear and flexible governance.
Case studies: experiences and territorial models
During the first lesson, several guests presented case studies with the aim of offering ideas and inspiration to participants.
Valentina De Pamphilis from Terre di Siena Lab presented the tourism model of the organisation she represents, understood not as promotion, but as an infrastructure for territorial development, in which governance, territorial animation, operator training, and marketing act in an integrated and coordinated manner.
Territorial marketing was presented as an ecosystem of tools – digital platforms, newsletters, editorial materials, social media and spaces for participation – in which the community becomes an active part of the narrative. The example of “San Gimignano – More than a story” shows how shared storytelling strengthens identity and recognisability.
Alessia Dipietro, President of Dnart APS, is involved in cultural planning, partnership development, and writing calls for proposals of the Moon ecosystem and Simone Dipietro, who is involved in cultural planning and project management at Dnart APS, presented the Moon Festival as a case study.. Not an episodic event but a a cultural ecosystem of communities, which, through participatory processes, involves the entire community in shows, installations, exhibitions, conferences, and music.. Through artistic residencies for under-30s, co-creation with residents, training, and educational recognition, the festival transforms the village of San Raffaele Cinema (Turin) into a space for relationships, learning, and belonging.
The Moon Festival showed participants how a cultural event can become a real social infrastructure, capable of generating networks, skills, and a sense of belonging in the long term.
Luca Fasano presented his company, Valverbe,which specialises in the cultivation, processing, and marketing of organic medicinal plants in Valle Varaita (CN), as a case study. Founded in 1985, Valverbe is an example of
a mountain business capable of integrating production quality, sustainability, and promotion of the territory, following a complete supply chain “from nature to the cup”, with an approach that combines technological innovation and respect for raw materials.
Elena Romano presented the Landscape Storymovers project, an innovative method of storytelling about territories that integrates oral storytelling, theatre, training, and experiential tourism, acting as a territorial activation devicethrough theatrical practices, cultural anthropology, and territorial planning. The project aims to keep the tradition of oral storytelling alive, while offering a new way of interpreting territories in the field of tourism, based on the concept of storymoving, as an approach that goes beyond static narration to transform authentic stories into concrete, dynamic, and relational experiences. Storymovers are tourist guides and escorts trained to tell the territories through experiential itineraries, with an informative and interpretative role, making the truth of the places accessible, understood as an intertwining of land, traditions, and human relationships.
Storytelling as a planning tool to create imagery, identity, and positioning
While the first lesson focused on reading, the second addressed a decisive step: telling the story of the territory as an integral part of planning. After a brief introduction by Riccardo Ramello from Santagata Foundation and project manager of the Agile Arvier project, the day got underway with presentations by the guests.
Among the guests of the day was Andrea Paoletti, president of Netural Coop and Wonder Grottole, who presented Wonder Grottole’ s experience as a case study of territorial regeneration based on storytelling, co-design, and community development. In Grottole, storytelling accompanied all stages of the process: from the initial reading of a context marked by depopulation to the
construction of new opportunities to live, work, and stay. Territorial storytelling, considered as a design tool is capable of generating shared imaginaries and making visible resources that are often considered marginal. The territory emerges as a complex ecosystem made up of spaces, relationships, skills, daily practices, and future visions. In this context, storytelling builds coherence between actions, strengthens the sense of belonging and facilitates the creation of multi-level networks.
Alice Avallone, a researcher of small data, cultural insights, and trends for companies, focused on cultural imaginaries as a strategic lever for the positioning of territories. Visibility, she emphasised, does not depend on the quantity of content produced, but on the ability to build a a recognisable, coherent and distinctive narrative.. She also introduced the concept of world building applied to territories, which invites us to think of places as complex narrative universes, made up of landscapes, social relationships, practices and emotions. The personification of the territory becomes an operational tool for clarifying identity, narrative tone and target audiences, avoiding standardised and interchangeable narratives.
Finally, Lorenzo Facchinelli, an artist representing Mali Weil, a multidisciplinary artistic collective based in Trento, further expanded the scope of storytelling by introducing the concept of diplomatic territories.. The territory was interpreted as a system of relationships involving human, natural, symbolic and interspecies dimensions. From this perspective, storytelling becomes a practice of responsibility: it makes invisible relationships, conflicts, cohabitations and transformations visible. Territorial conflicts are not removed, but interpreted as indicators of ways of coexistence and future choices. Storytelling thus takes on a cultural and political significance, consistent with the principles of environmental and social sustainability.
Dalla teoria alla pratica: laboratori e progettualità in embrione
Both lessons ended with workshop activities, which translated the theoretical content into practical projects.
From the community mapping exercise “My invisible Arvier” to the workshop “From identity to target audience”, participants worked on:
- critical analysis of the territory,
- identification of actual beneficiaries,
- definition of consistent identity messages,
- alignment between identity, narrative and project.
Twelve project themes emerged, ranging from the promotion of outdoor trails to dog hospitality, from open-air festivals and museums to projects focusing on inclusivity, wellbeing, gaming and experiential tourism.
An open process, not a finished product
The first two lessons of the School for Village Hosts Arvier laid the foundations for a path that focuses on the territory, the community and a long-term vision. Local development is not a sequence of interventions, but a process of collective construction.. Reading and narrating the territory means taking responsibility for interpreting, imagining and transforming it without simplifying it.
The School does not produce solutions imposed from above, but rather shared methodologies, languages and visions capable of generating skills, relationships and projects rooted in time.
A starting point, rather than a goal, to continue reading Arvier – and Alta Valle – with new eyes.
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“Agile Arvier. The Culture of Change” is a project by the Municipality of Arvier (Ao), in collaboration with Fondazione Santagata and Netural Coop Impresa Sociale, funded by PNRR – Next Generation EU, for the pilot project PNRR M1C3 Measure 2 Investment 2.1 line A – CUP F87B22000380001 – Project Arvier Innovation – Residence for innovative trainers – CIG B82B5B7CAE – WP05 – EDUCATION LAB CLP REGIS 2.1_
