Learning through artistic based practices in vulnerable territories

This contribution investigates how artistic practices involving listening and walking could inform organizational action in vulnerable territories, such as areas affected by natural disasters, neglect, or environmental degradation. Using a shared action-research methodology, the researchers act as co-designers and lead-participants in collective "walking laboratories" designed to achieve ecological tuning. Three case studies serve as the empirical basis: Foot_Notes, which reconnects residents with marginalized paths in Vesuvius National Park; Tune the Town, which informs on urban noise pollution and enhance acoustic quality of places, improving marginal the city’s marginal areas; and M.A.I.O., which utilizes inclusive, performance-based hikes to explore". oblique" paths. Findings explore change and sensorial reorientation through a shift in epistemological paradigms — as in walking and listening — facilitating a sustainable relationality that treats the territory as a source of agency, rather than an extractable resource. These practices encourage a heightened awareness of situated processes rather than the production of formal artifacts. Ultimately, the paper advocates for an alternative organizing approach that inverts the product process relationship, suggesting that the transitory act of crossing a landscape can trigger a profound transformation in how communities perceive, organize, and care for their shared environments.