Art, Community, Heritage in Rural areas: a case study
- Feb 23
- 11 min read
(1) Sara del Bene
(1) Artist and organizational well-being consultant - www.saradelbene.it
A journey across the rural heritage through the history and uses of an invasive plant.
This article proposes a reflection on artistic practices situated in rural areas, focusing on the relationship between contemporary art, local knowledge, and material and immaterial heritage. Starting from the observation of landscapes often perceived as marginal—such as hedgerows, embankments, and abandoned green areas—the contribution explores how artistic interventions can emerge from close engagement with the territory and its ecological and social dynamics. In these spaces, wild clematis ( or Clematis vitalba), an invasive climbing plant commonly found along rural paths, becomes both a subject of observation and a material for creative practice.
The concept of rooted art is introduced here as an artistic approach grounded in place, community, and local resources. Rather than treating rural landscapes as neutral backdrops, rooted art engages directly with the specificities of the territory: its rhythms, its forms of labour, its traditions, and its living heritage. In this perspective, artistic practice becomes a tool for dialogue and collaboration, capable of activating processes of shared learning and reinterpreting rural knowledge within contemporary cultural frameworks.
Within the broader discourse on heritage preservation and sustainable cultural development, this contribution argues for an understanding of heritage not as a fixed set of objects or traditions to be conserved, but as a dynamic process that can be reactivated through participatory artistic practices. By prioritising identitarian elements—such as local plant species, traditional craftsmanship, and seasonal practices—rooted art contributes to the valorisation of rural heritage, while opening up possibilities for innovation, community engagement, and sustainable tourism.
Hedgerows and embankments in the countryside and in abandoned green areas often host a dominant weed that climbs trees and fences with remarkable vigour. This invasive plant, known in Latin as Clematis, spreads aggressively in its search for light. By growing over other plants, it can suffocate and eventually kill them. For farmers, it represents a serious challenge, as it grows rapidly and thrives in a wide range of environments, including mountainous areas.
Art can function as a tool for dialogue and collaboration, as well as a means to explore new forms of heritage activation that foster innovation and sustainable cultural practices. Creative approaches rooted in local communities, their heritage, and their territories can reveal alternative modes of cultural valorisation. Making traditional savoir-faire accessible to a wider public allows heritage to be preserved while simultaneously reactivated, opening up opportunities for future collaborations and local initiatives. The ultimate objective of this research revolves around the notion of rooted art: artistic practices that establish a dialogue with people, traditions, and spaces.
The artist Sara Del Bene collaborates closely with local communities to reinterpret cultural and natural environments as artistic spaces. Her recent work focuses on rural contexts and the use of natural materials, with the aim of establishing deeper connections with the territory and highlighting its material and immaterial heritage. This reflection emerges from her experience as an artist working in rural areas, particularly through projects centred on community engagement. Over time, artistic interventions involving local communities have multiplied, leading to a sustained investigation into participatory practices in nature. In this context, she reflects on one recurring activity: an artistic intervention in the landscape that takes an invasive plant as its protagonist—the wild clematis (Clematis vitalba).
Clematis vitalba belongs to the Ranunculaceae family and has historically been known for its medicinal properties. One of its most distinctive visual characteristics is its ability to form long lianas, transforming woodland landscapes into environments reminiscent of jungles. It creates web-like structures and intricate natural patterns, resulting in striking, almost sculptural compositions within the landscape. Commonly known as “traveller’s joy,” the plant adorns rural paths in winter with flowers and fruits resembling soft feathers. Another widespread name, “old man’s beard,” refers to the white, feathery seed clusters that give the plant its distinctive appearance.
Beyond its visual qualities, clematis functions as a natural rope. When cut, its long and flexible stems—often several metres in length—can be used to create objects. Easy to handle, it has traditionally been employed in rural areas for basket-making and other forms of craftsmanship. As a woody plant, its stems are particularly suitable for producing both functional and decorative artefacts. For these reasons, clematis was chosen as the basis for creative workshops in rural contexts, transforming an invasive species into the central element of an artistic intervention. An important precaution is to handle this plant when freshly cut while wearing gloves in order to prevent skin irritation.
Within this artistic research, the concept of rooted art is developed through active dialogue with local communities, rural knowledge and traditions, and the natural spaces themselves. The project highlights the qualities and potential uses of a plant commonly perceived as invasive and detrimental to agricultural practices. The choice of clematis also carries a strong symbolic dimension: cutting the plant contributes to clearing paths and revitalising the surrounding environment. Proposing a collective activity focused on caring for shared pathways becomes a powerful community-building exercise. Moreover, the plant material—often considered waste—can be reused to create sustainable objects. This approach reflects the essence of traditional rural craftsmanship: working with locally available materials, transforming what is discarded into unique and useful objects for everyday life. The value lies not only in the finished artefact, but also in the act of making itself—recognising plants in the landscape, mastering artisanal techniques, and engaging creatively with nature.
Wild clematis has been employed as a tool for community-building activities during spring in rural areas. Participants work with the plant collected along paths, using this climbing weed as raw material for object-making. One of the first objects proposed was the trellis, a common rural tool traditionally used for drying fruits and vegetables harvested from gardens. A particularly meaningful aspect of this exercise is that the search for materials simultaneously contributes to the removal of the invasive plant from public paths.
Community-based activities such as these offer opportunities for exchanging ideas and visions regarding the future of rural areas. The workshops are conceived as outdoor experiences designed to stimulate participants’ creativity while fostering moments of sharing and collective learning about rural environments, all while enhancing the territory itself. Several key elements characterise the proposal of this activity in rural contexts. First, there is the enhancement of nature as both scenic backdrop and living environment, encompassing the landscape, the territory, and its rhythms. Second, sustainability plays a central role, as the materials used for the workshops are freely and readily available in nature. Third, the workshops are conceived as reproducible, with the aim of replicating the experience across multiple municipalities.
The primary objective is to promote an outdoor group activity that allows participants to express creativity while immersed in nature and to produce a tangible outcome. In this context, nature is not merely the setting of the workshop but becomes the medium of dialogue itself. This is particularly significant in rural areas, where residents’ knowledge of plants and natural cycles is invaluable and enriches each encounter. Every workshop thus becomes an opportunity to share ancestral knowledge, artisanal skills, beliefs, and rituals connected to agricultural life.
Working with natural elements also requires respect for nature’s temporal rhythms. In the case of wild clematis, the optimal harvesting period is late spring, when the vines are soft enough to be collected and immediately worked. By the end of spring, once the plant has produced its fruits, the stems become rigid and lose their flexibility. This awareness is an integral part of working with natural materials and contributes to strengthening communities’ sense of rootedness in their territory.
This contribution concludes with an invitation that is closely aligned with the conceptual framework of rooted art and heritage-based practices. The initiative described here will be offered again in the spring in Tuscany, and further information will be shared with those interested in exploring artistic interventions situated within rural contexts. (updated information on the website www.sardelbene.it) Given the widespread presence of wild clematis across Europe, this workshop model lends itself to replication in diverse territories, while remaining attentive to local specificities, ecological conditions, and cultural traditions.
Through collective engagement with this plant, and through the creative processes activated among participants, a variety of objects have been produced, including trays, containers, decorative artefacts, and bird nests. These outcomes should be understood not merely as crafted objects, but as material expressions of an immaterial heritage: shared knowledge, seasonal practices, manual skills, and community-based modes of learning. In this sense, the workshops function as sites of heritage activation rather than preservation alone, reinterpreting traditional rural knowledge within contemporary artistic practice.
Artists, cultural practitioners, and local communities interested in engaging with rural environments are warmly invited to participate in this experience and to further develop this approach in dialogue with their own territories. By doing so, they may contribute to a broader reflection on rooted artistic practices as a means of strengthening relationships between communities, landscapes, and heritage, and of fostering sustainable, place-based cultural production.
Comment 1
General remark: this is a text that aims to communicate an interesting ways of connecting artistic practices with the practices and needs of rural communities. However, for a general reader that wants to learn more about this, the current version of the text feels somewhat messy in an unintended way? Some questions are: who is writing the text for which audience? I believe some interventions can be done to get the message across. See underlying comments.
The aim
I have problems grasping what the exact aim of this text is. It doesn't seem to provide reflection but rather to present a way of community building in rural areas, right? Or is this an invitation for other local communities to participate in this (ongoing?) community exercises.
is to propose a reflection focused on rural heritage. A knowledge that is slowly disappearing in rural areas, an art that uses conscious and sustainable craftsmanship, finding materials of natural origin at km 0 to create objects that are tools for everyday use, with a specific example: the vitalba clementis, a weed widely spread throughout Europe.
A journey across the rural heritage through the history and uses of an invasive plant.
An invitation
Who is adressed here? Who is invited? The reader? Or the local communities - and this text is a report of this invitation?
to observe hedges and embankments in the countryside and in abandoned green areas, where it is easy to spot a predominant weed that climbs trees and fences. An invasive weed, called Clematis in Latin because it is a climbing plant. It is considered an invasive plant because it would kill other plants by climbing on them in search of light. It is a nightmare for farmers, it grows very quickly and everywhere, even in the mountains.
An invitation to observe hedges and banks in the countryside and in abandoned green areas, where you can easily spot a predominant weed that climbs on trees and fences. An invasive weed, called in Latin Clematis as it is a climbing plant. It is considered an intrusive plant because it would kill other plants by climbing on them searching for light. It is a nightmare for farmers, it grows very fast and everywhere, up to the mountains.
I really don't see the point of the double alinea here. I can hardly believe this is something the editor has not spotted. So then I started thinking - in the context of this specific journal - whether this is intentional. But to be fair, I don't see any specific effects here, so I am afraid it is a rewritten alinea that is still in the original text? Should thus be left out I think.
The Clementis belong to the Ranunculaceae family. It has medicinal proprieties, and it has been used in various treatments in the past. The visual characteristics that let this plant stand out is that creates lianas, that made a forest look like a jungle. It also creates cobwebs that creates intricates forms in the nature, interesting natural art compositions in the nature.
The plant is a natural rope and if cutter, it can be of several meters can be used to make objects. It is flexible and friendly to use. In rural areas this plant has been used to make baskets. It is a woody plant, the stem can be used to create objects.
It is also called traveller’s joy, because during the winter it decorated the path in the countryside with its flowers and fruits that looks like feathers. Also known as old man’s beard, because the fruits seed clusters have a feathered appearance and are white in colour.
I have proposed this exercises
At this point, it is not really clear to the reader what the exercises ('these exercises') entail, so maybe add a clarificatory sentence here?
also for its symbolic aspect. It is an invasive plant, cutting it, will clean the paths, and revitalise the nature in the area. Proposing a community exercise to take care of our paths is a powerful exercise. Additionally with the waste we can build sustainable objects and not only. This is the beauty of traditional rural art, working with materials that are available in the proximity, using what today is considered waste, build unique object that are useful for daily life. The charm is the action, the crafts of being able to work with materials that we find in nature, being able to recognise the plants when we are walking in nature, being able to master an art and being creative with it.
The artist, Sara Del Bene,
I have the impression that the artist who wrote this piece stands for a personal approach to art. Wouldn't it be better and more fitting to introduce the artist's name in the introduction instead of here, where it feels kind of lost. This information would work better in a personal introduction to the topic, I think. Compared to what happens now in the introduction, where sentences start with 'the aim is, and 'an invitation to' offer a more impersonal impression to the reader.
collaborates with the local community to rethink cultural, natural environments into artistic spaces. Recently, with a focus on rural areas, and interest in natural materials, the artistic research wants to connect with the territory and enhance its potential of material and immaterial heritage.
Art can be a tool for dialogue and collaboration, a tool to investigate new forms of heritage preservation to foster innovation and sustainable tourism. Revealing creative approaches that want to be rooted in the community, its heritage, its territory. Prioritizing identitarian elements, such a specific product or knowledge, is a way to value rural heritage; to preserve it but also to relaunch, make this “savoifaire” available to the public, for future collaboration or businesses. The final objective, revolves around the concept of “rooted” art, developing artistic intervention that dialogues with the people, the traditions and the spaces."
Community Building
The editorial rediscover the qualities and use of a plant that is considered invasive and hostile to the cultivation purpose.
Something seems to be going wrong in the first part of the sentence. Should it be 'This editorial - refering to this piece - rediscovers'?
This plant has been used as main tool for community building exercises in spring in rural areas. We worked with the clematis, a weed that is found in the path. A climbing plant that can be used as a material to create objects. The object that we went to create is the trellis. A tool of common use, of rural art that is used to dry the fruits or vegetables collected in the garden. The interesting aspect of this exercise is that while you are looking for material for the workshop, we are simultaneously clearing the street of this invasive plant. A community building activity is an opportunity to exchange ideas and visions on the future of rural areas. These workshops were an opportunity to feel the space and discover hidden corners that have potential for “living” this area.
Several part of the texts feel a bit too repetitive.
It would be good to know more about the author's perspective on tools and art. 'A tool of common use, of rural art' seems to equate tools and art, but I can imagine the local population does consider a trellis not to be art, but just to be a tool. Or am I wrong? This text seems to suggest that the co-practice between artist and communities are smooth, but isn't there any tension/challenge to reconcile artistice purposes with local needs? This is a question that emerges reading the text.
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