Re-homing Processes Through Art and Culture

Abstract

By resignifying the concept of homing, used in ethology to describe the ability of migrant birds to remember and return to a familiar place, this contribution aims to critically reflect on how art and culture can contribute to open up a space for intercultural dialogue between migrants, local inhabitants and space, to enact processes of homing able to increase the sense of belonging within the city. Given these premises, in the framework of institutional policies and cultural grassroot initia-tives, I will explore some practices of homing performed in the historical city center of Palermo that, aside from the political and media narratives of migration and hospi-tality, reveals itself as the ground of a multitude of actions aimed at strengthening social cohesion and togetherness through art and culture at the neighbourhood scale and improving the lives of marginalized urban communities.