La città e il territorio dell’Aquila: quello che i ragazzi ci consentono di capire a dieci anni dal terremoto

The city and the territory of L’Aquila: what children permit us to understand ten years after the earthquake From 2013 to 2020, the reserach group of the Cartolab Laboratory of the Department of Human Sciences carried out over 40 geomapping laboratories in various schools in the Municipality of L’Aquila. These involved hundreds of children, both from the primary school level and lower secondary school. The objective of the workshops, carried out as part of an overall strategy of participatory research-action in the post-earthquake L’Aquila region, was twofold. From the research point of view, the laboratories have been designed in order to produce and collect data and materials concerning the “geography of children”, composed as much by a multiplicity of places of everyday life as by perceptions and representations of the city and territory. From an educational point of view, then, the workshops were designed in order to achieve specific training and learning objectives in Geography. The analysis of the enormous amount of data and materials collected, and above all of about 241 drawings or maps produced by children, facilitated the perception of the image they have of the city and the territory of L’Aquila and, starting from that image, to elaborate a descriptive and interpretative framework of the socio-territorial dynamics currently underway. What geography of post-earthquake L’Aquila do children draw? What image of the city and the territory of L’Aquila emerges from the analysis of their representations? What do children tell us, through their drawings, about the currrent socio-territorial dynamics?