Videos, 3D comics and satellite photos: students tell the story of the wine landscape

There are satellite maps, short films and even a 3D comic, “Lo gnomo delle Vigne”, among the communication ideas developed by students from ten schools in five regions (Piedmont, Calabria, Sicily, Lazio and Tuscany) in the project “Il paesaggio del vino: nuovi forme di conoscenza del territorio” (The wine landscape: new forms of knowledge of the territory), conceived by the National Association Città del Vino and financed with a ban by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. “One of the objectives of the project - explained the Deputy Director of Città del Vino, Paolo Corbini - was to attract as many people as possible on the theme of the wine landscape, especially the youngest. The students involved, in the end about 500 in the five regions involved, had the opportunity to think about what is the landscape of wine and the value that the landscape has in land management. When we presented the project, we gave basic information about the wine landscape and the culture that underlies it, trying not to be too technical. From the feedback we received from the schools, I would say, the experience was positive. The videos produced were very interesting, they have grasped the sense that we wanted, namely that telling the rural landscape of wine is a matter of poetry. We have contacts with the schools involved now. We will certainly continue along the path of youth involvement in developing other proposals”.

About fifteen talented young people (the junior experts), followed by some Senior experts, professionals in the field of communication, and under the coordination of the food expert Emanuela Panke, have tried different expressive techniques, from photography to video, writing, storytelling and comics, to communicate the multiple meanings and values of the wine-growing landscape and also devise narrative tools to convey those same values to a wider audience.

In Piedmont, the young people of the “Umberto I” School of Oenology in Alba (and its detachment at Grinzane Cavour) have tried their hand at storytelling, producing an essay on the “niche” of Iga Beers, in practice a cross between beer and grapes still little known to the public, by interviewing the owners of the Cadia Winery, active for thirty years in the territories of Roddi d'Alba.
In Calabria, the students of the “Preti-Frangipane” High School of Reggio Calabria have chosen photography to express themselves by grasping the narrow, almost invisible but always current links between the Ionian coast of Reggio Calabria, Greece and wine. The photographer and documentary filmmaker Glauco Canalis, who followed the students' work, observed that “exploring the territory of wine corresponds to a journey through history”.
In Sicily, Etna and the wine-growing landscape of Eastern Sicily were the subjects chosen by the students of the Liceo “Musco” in Catania and of the Istituto Alberghiero “Rocco Chinnici” in Nicolosi: to represent them, the most modern iconography was used, i.e. images from Google Maps and Bing, as well as digitised archive images.
In Lazio, the Istituto Tecnico Agrario Emilio Sereni and the Istituto Tecnico Agrario Giuseppe Garibaldi have collaborated with the well-known Disney designer Sandro Dossi to create the comic strip to be read with 3D glasses “Lo gnomo delle Vigne”, designed especially for children, those children who maybe accompany mum and dad on wine tourism trips and with the comic strip have the opportunity not only to enjoy themselves but also better understand the context in which they find themselves.
Finally, in Tuscany, the students carried out their task of communicating the wine-growing landscape by relying on videos: the students of the Roncalli Institute in Poggibonsi (Siena) shot about ten videos with smartphones interviewing people from Valdelsa to highlight the generic skills of the local population on wine production. The students of the Liceo Artistico “Duccio di Boninsegna” in Siena, on the other hand, used their skills in multimedia techniques to produce a short film on the landscapes of wine.