Itinerari della memoria. Riscoprire la “risorsa turismo” per la riabilitazione e la formazione dei migranti anziani

The importance of memory, in the millennial history of Mediterranean civilizations, has been enhanced since ancestral ages. In today's world, the enhancement of memory processes through oral narration represents a field of study of strategic importance for those who are involved in training processes aimed at migrant elderly people. Along the history of cultural exchanges between Italy and Albania, massive migrations of poor people occurred in recent decades. Think of the landing of the Vlora ship in the port of Bari on 8 August 1991. This event led to the uprooting of thousands of adults from their homeland. They need to recover, together with younger relatives, the memory of significant places where they were born and lived with their parents. Therefore, for the recovery and strengthening of their ability to re-elaborate cultural memory, a targeted training planning is necessary, centered on the travel experience in the "places of memory". It is important to elaborate a pedagogical project centered both on a physical journey and on a virtual journey. The physical journey is documented with smartphones by “travellers” led by “expert” pedagogists, able to evoke environments and relationships full of positive emotions, but also full of memories that recall the social textures of the community now consigned to the past, with the cultural treasures represented by experiences of manual and intellectual work that are no longer carried out and which today are replaced by the efficient voracity of the ever-updated digital machines, as well as by stories of now forgotten rituals and myths, which gave meaning to the passing of days. The virtual journey is based on the experience of the physical journey. The “virtual travellers” are the same people involved in the physical journey, who live a fullimmersion experience in a museum in which their itinerary will be centered on the "traces of memory". Such “traces” are both artefacts which reproduce significant moments in the personal history of the elder people. They are made with 3D printers and stories taken by their “physical journey” and exposed on the walls of the museum.