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The Lo Pan Ner festival: celebrating traditional breadmaking across the Alps

CONTEXT

Festivals provide a great opportunity to raise awareness about local traditions and promote Every village had an oven. intangible and tangible heritage. When al- Some of them were very lowing visitors to experience local culture in the good and some not so much. ways it chooses, the community gives heritage new cultural, social and economic meaning. Not It depended on the stones only does visitors’ positive experience promote which they were built of. the festival through word-of-mouth, but it can also boost local economy and pride. Enrico Croux, community member Lo pan ner – black bread (Foto Belley, , 2016)

ACTIVITIES

Lo Pan Ner is a weekend event of traditional wheat and rye breadmaking. It started in 2015, IMAGE or when a thousand volunteers from Valle d’Aosta INFOGRAPHIC (IT) lit up again seventy community ovens and organised animations, workshops, shows, confe- rences, religious rites, exhibitions and competi- tions. In four years, the event has gone transna- tional, first by including communities from Val Poschiavo (CH), then from Park des Bauges (FR), and lastly from Upper Sava Valley (SL).

Women from the community of Aymavilles knead dough for bread (A. Marchetto, Aymavilles, October 2017) Children learn how to tie wheat bundles (R. Gyppaz, , June 2016)

RESULTS RES U LTS

The owners of the oven Lo Pan Ner has revived the tradition of baking were all and none and black bread across the Alps and has brought to the restoration of many community ovens in each had the right . It brings older and younger genera- to use it. tions together to preserve and safeguard local bread baking traditions, ensuring the transmis- sion of know-how while also highlighting com- Lidia Perrod, monalities and peculiarities of traditional bread community member baking across the Alps, strengthening the fee- ling of a common Alpine identity.

A community oven in Seissogne (A. Marchetto, Saint-Marcel, October 2017)