Among the partnership countries, France and Belgium have significant and pioneering experience with the inventory of traditional ludic heritage thanks to their ludodiversity programme. In Croatia and Cyprus, more recent and significant experiences are underway.
In Italy, with the participation in the tender on intangible heritage of the Lombardy Region, the Ancient Games Association (AGA) inaugurated a new season of studies in 2018, devoted to the inventory of traditional recreational heritage in close dialogue with the communities of practice.
The Project “IN GIOCO” (In Play – Journey through a Playing Region” inaugurated an innovative approach to the inventory of intangible cultural heritage, basing research, aimed at safeguarding, on the network of relationships woven over the years by AGA.
We worked in a network: some of the communities that welcomed us are part of a movement that every year in September gathers in the Tocatì of Verona. They have been AGA’s fellow travellers for many years. Other communities were a further discovery. We sincerely thank all of them for the valuable work they have made possible, sharing their traditions with us and guiding us along fascinating hidden paths. Thanks to them we continue to discover that traditional games are much more than it seems: games are embedded memory, they are rules, needs and passions, adaptations to transformation, communication and health, sociability and sense of community, celebration and the daily life.