Street art as a form of socio-educational intervention

Cultural heritage is made whether of tangible assets – physical places and natural environments – as well as intangible assets, such as languages, music, religions, folklore, manual skills. It’s something that can be offered to everyone as a resource, as an area of study, a temporal and spatial point of reference in understanding human collectivity and their cultural and environmental contexts. For this reason, it is a significant and essential element to be included in educational processes, for the purpose of adding human and social meaning to knowledge, consistency to research and study methods, and effectiveness to the planning and implementation strategies. This communication aims to stress how street art can be considered a specific kind of cultural heritage, through which is possible to combat and reduce social exclusion. The project that will be presented is: Artisti in Piazza – International Performing Arts Festival. Hosted since 1997 by the Italian city of Pennabilli, this art-based project focuses on the promotion and development of the territory through cultural and artistic production. It represents a unique event that integrates the play and cultural aspects, driving towards authentic educational actions, carried out to encourage equal and widespread opportunities for access, participation, and representation, without creating cultural confines that generate or legitimize inequality, within the communities and among the individuals.