Piantagruèl is a participatory process initiated by Meta Forte with Barena Bianca, Tocia! and Spontaneus Lab in the northern part of the Venetian Lagoon in 2021. The 2022 edition sees the addition of other initiatives in the Venetian environment such as We are here Venice and Prometheus Open Food Lab. Through excursions, workshops, meetings with local experts and other experimental methods linked to the idea of “place-based education”, Piantagruèl seeks to deepen local ecological knowledge of specific areas of the Cavallino peninsula and its surrounding areas, both towards the lagoon and inland. Specifically, the project and its participants focused on spontaneous herbs, the flora and fauna of the area and the characteristics of the ecosystem in two senses: on the one hand, understanding their changes and traditional uses, and on the other, inquiring possible developments in the present and future.
Developing over entire days, often without division between educational and convivial moments, Piantagruèl aims to create a horizontal learning environment in which each participant brings his or her own experience, and in which the ecosystem dimension plays a fundamental role: by immersing oneself in it, traditional learning is mixed with a more direct and immersive mode derived from the surrounding nature.
