Building a Nest: Art and Ecology as Formative and Transformative Practices in Adult Education

The pandemic crisis has been considered by some pedagogists not as a destructive event of a func- tioning educational system, but as the possibility of participating in the transformation of learning models. In 2021-2022, the Department of Human Sciences of the University of Verona promoted the training course “Practices and cultures of difference in educational and care work” which was attended by 35 professionals of social-health and educational services. The course proposed to move away from ‘expertism’ to rethink the care of oneself, of places and of others, as a common good, thanks to an ecological perspective that questions the link between learning and the envi- ronment, between daily work and community life, art-based methodologies as levers for processes of transformative learning. The third module of the training course was titled “Know how: com- munity art practices” and was held at the Mare Memoria Viva ecomuseum in Palermo. The artistic workshop of intensive two weeks contributed to the creation of a new space for cultural fruition: an Ecodom structure in Superadobe in the shape of a nest.