The community-based digital archiving practice in a pedagogical perspective. Reflections for a more sustainable city

The task Creation of a Digital Documentation Centre on Sustainability Practices, planned in the Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action project (MUSA) aims to develop a digital platform to make visible and to share a culture of sustainability in the Bicocca District, in the city of Milan. The research wants to take into consideration activities implemented throughout the project itself and actions realized by associations, cultural and social entities who are settled in this metropolitan area. The conceptual framework to define sustainability is the United Nations 2030 Agenda (UN General Assembly, 2015), which describes this from an integrated perspective, where environmental, social and economic aspects are linked. Consequently, the study implies the creation of a digital observatory to represent different aspects of sustainability as a cultural practice in the mentioned context. This proposal can be ascribed to an overall notion of polis as a context, where it is possible to enhance a collaborative, lifelong and lifewide learning process (Balázs, 2019) supported by different stakeholders (political actors; universities; citizens). The first turns of the literature review have explored the digital humanities area, to understand how enlarging the possibilities of traditional archiving practice using the web 2.0 opportunities. The theoretical reference of the community-based archiving (Ridolfo, Hart-Davidson & McLeod, 2011; Cantillon, Baker, & Buttigieg, 2017; O’Quinn, 2022) has been seen as a flourished perspective to connect the task’s objective with the overall viewpoint of the project, directed to realize a participative research, useful for the whole citizenry. This sustainable approach to metadata can generate opportunities of dialogue between academic community and people outside universities and promote a real open science. It implies, indeed, a «purposeful communication and activities among participants» (O’Quinn, 2022, p. 5) and foresees a durable collaboration and an iterative design, conceived as an «ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders, [with the objective of a final interface that] can reflect the needs of the community as well as their goals for the archive» (idem, p. 27). The ongoing research for the creation of a digital documentation centre on sustainability practices can assume some elements of the community-based archiving, to design a platform really useful for different users, not only in the academic community, but also in the organizations and in the territorial community. The paper presents different features from this approach, giving evidence to their pedagogical implications, in order to describe the interrelation between this conceptualization and the purposes of the task.