Abstract

On Tuesday 11 March 2025, an international meeting was held at the Magnani Foundation auditorium ‘Reconnecting With Your Culture’, promoted by the architectural restoration course of the University of Pavia, chaired by Professor Olimpia Niglio, in in collaboration with the Magnani Foundation. The backdrop of the meeting was the early Romanesque Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Lomello, one of the oldest in the Apennine peninsula, celebrating this year the jubilee of the 1000th anniversary of its foundation. The international meeting, chaired by Professor Mariella Magnani, president of the Magnani Foundation and coordinated by Professor Olimpia Niglio of the University of Pavia, was attended by Professor Tsuneaki Fukui of Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan, Professor Gireesh Kumar of Banaras Hindu University in India, and Dr Eng. arch. Agnieszka Kurkowska from the Faculty of Architecture, Gdansk University of Technology, all active members of the RWYC pedagogical project, who met to share the results of a programme activated in schools in their countries and important for the development of cultural diplomacy projects. The exchange also allowed for an evaluation of the pedagogical pathways and results achieved in the various schools participating in the programme. The Reconnecting With Your Culture project, activated in 2020 five years later, has already produced numerous results and international awards, attesting to the quality and value of the content that the programme proposes to strengthen local cultures and develop cultural diplomacy. Chair of Environmental Design WAPG joined in 2023 as an official project partner. The president of RWYC Poland is Dr Agnieszka Kurkowska, her deputy is M.Sc. arch. Paulina Duch-Żebrowska. Also participating in the project's activities is Dr Eng. arch. Marta Koperska-Kośmicka. The academics who spoke in Lomello stressed the importance of the ‘cultural pilgrimage’ made possible by this programme, travelling many roads and meeting many people, all committed to a common goal: education in local cultural heritage, fundamental to world peace. On the occasion of the Jubilee Year, the scholars expressed great hope that the cooperation undertaken would continue and that the role of culture as a basis for peace processes and territorial development would be increasingly promoted. The next meeting will take place in Japan during Expo Osaka 2025.

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