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_ Sergio Pretelli
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Sergio Pretelli

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Historical memory

The idea of lifelong research emerges within this cultural framework and, as a result of continuous study and cultural growth, it confirms that human beings can be creative at any age.

During the past fifty years, the towns where we operate have deeply changed: craftsmen’s shops, taverns, common gathering places, wood-stores, cellars , public ovens where bread used to be cooked, fountains, public toilets, furriers, rope-makers’ equipment, and even places of worship have disappeared. There has been a radical transformation of the urban environment where the generation that now attends the university for adult and senior citizens was born and grew up.

This is also a privileged project and a field of research for those adult students who have been the witnesses of life in the streets and repositories of their fathers' memories.

We think that with the old people’s help we can create some original documentation concerning daily life, material culture and popular religion not for the mere reconstruction of events, but rather for an understanding of the foundations of culture, of the values and of what was or was considered important by the people. It is a matter of understanding and recording on paper or a digital means the various economic activities, social activities, consumer goods, forms of saving, religiousness, participation in administrative and civil life in order to share as many elements as possible with historians for the analysis and critical evaluation of a period of life (1950-2000) which-in Italy-coincides with the economic growth and the coming of welfare. This way, the elderly offer precious information to historians and professors from the state universities.

Micro-stories of life

Senior citizens' micro-stories can be put side by side with statistics, administrative acts, and events in order to explain and justify the numbers and their possible connections.

Lately, oral sources have been considered as important as written ones in historical research.

The quick rhythm of changes and the lengthening of human life make the Universities of the third age a privileged "school" for the utilization of such sources. We have heard clear memories of daily life and balanced critical analyses from adults who spent their childhood in the same neighbourhood and same street and who have later separated due to different destinies.

The students are all useful sources with regard to the project, because in our region the transition from agriculture to industrial and commercial activities has happened late, and there are no large cities in it. Habits, traditions, rites, virtues and vices of the town and of the country were known to everyone, and everybody could be a potential source of documentation.

Finally, it must be highlighted that the older people’s interest in this initiative has increased with the "inter-university days" during which students from different universities had a chance to meet and share their experiences. Every year, the results of the researches are presented to all the students of the university for Adult and Senior Citizens of the town of Vicenza and its branches in the province. They meet in a village in the province of Vicenza and spend the day together.