Activities | Dolomites UNESCO LabFest: the Festival of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation
Project
It is a themed, multi-disciplinary festival that is experimental and designed to involve everyone.
LabFest creates opportunities for meetings, discussions, partnerships and the exchange of knowledge between all the people of the Dolomites. It stimulates creativity and participation, involving both local residents and visitors alike. Its innovative language and tools encourage dialogue between different worlds and disciplines.
The challenge for LabFest is to find synthesis within such complexity, enhancing the shared aspects of what means to be part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
La Val – Alta Badia (Bolzano) 5-6-7 september 2014
The topic of the zero edition was hay harvest. It is a practical topic, linked to soil, that allowed us to discuss other topics, among which landscape conservation, tourism, agriculture and pasture, modernity of tradition, migration and return to ones origins. This topic is both ancient and modern, it is ideal to overcome the stereotyped picture-postcard image of mountains, and to explain what mountains are really like. The Labfest wanted to illustrate the hay harvest with full-color images, through the social media, to the young and with the young, speaking about economy and literature, and listening to true stories. Taking care of meadows is still fundamental for the conservation of the Dolomites landscape. The issue of hay harvest involved experts and curious people coming from the world of geography, architecture, urban and landscape studies, anthropology, natural sciences, economy and tourism.
Auronzo di Cadore (Belluno) 28-29-30 august 2015
LabFest 2015 explored the multi-faceted theme of borders, through theatre, dance, photography, music, walks, discussions and at play. All at the foot of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, once a theatre of war, now one of the global icons of the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Dolomites have always been marked by borders but now, one hundred years after the Great War that turned neighbouring farmers into enemies, they are as one, recognised as one single World Heritage Site. The history of the Dolomites has been scarred by conflict but this land is also a meeting place, the scene of partnerships, trading, a cross-over point, the ideal setting for measuring up to one’s own limits, conditioned by the landscape and its natural barriers.