MON-ART – The Monasteries of Art

A millennium ago, the Benedictine, Cluniacs, Cistercians monasteries played a pivotal role in creating the European identity, acting as drivers of civilization and sustainable development. The challenge of the project is to establish an analogous, lay “Monasteries of art” aimed to play a similar role although based on the regenerative power of artistic creativity rather than on religious principles. Within such frame, the main goal is to implement specific forms of public art engaging local communities in strategies of cultural regeneration by leveraging the material and immaterial cultural heritage preserved by them, although sometimes hidden from their own eyes.

In line with the European Green Deal (EGD) and the New European Bauhaus (NEB), Mon-Art will organize specific artistic residencies aimed at co-creating new dynamics of interaction between humans and nature opening to new lifestyles and new way of working based on more environment-friendly practices, more healthy behaviours, more creative attitudes.

The result achieved at a local level will be exploited and systematized at a European and international level thanks to the activation of a peculiar Mon-Art Network (MAN) aimed at supporting, refining, and implementing the regeneration strategies activated in the pilot “Monasteries of Art”. All the organizations involved – particularly the micro and grass-root ones – will gain new capacities to cooperate at European and international level.

Another significant result is the design of the professional profile of the “regeneration artist”, a creative operator working in alignment to the framework of the EGD and NEB playing a leading role in implementing green sustainable and circular economy perspectives during the artistic residences. The overall impact of the project will be an incentive to a deep cultural regeneration, the raising of the spiritual level of the local communities involved, and the triggering of new dynamics of effective creative economies.

MON-ART project is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.