This period was crucial for defining and implementing the AGA pilot programme, which includes tourism experiments in three areas of the Veneto region. Starting with Verona and the S-cianco/AGA community, a route through the city's historic centre was designed with the community and documented with the participation of volunteers. This itinerary tells the story of the rebirth of a traditional game that gave rise to a major movement to safeguard gaming heritage in all its diversity, with the Tocatì festival. This depicts a different Verona, inviting tourists to reflect on the value of this movement and on a diverse city, rich in social significance, experienced by its residents and communities. Monuments and squares in the city centre are connected to the story of the birth of AGA, the first festivals, and the living memory of the historic centre's squares and streets, reclaimed for traditional gaming as a great building block of society and universal expression, a living heritage. The dialogue with WAYS is leading to the clarification of many aspects and is teaching us the challenges of implementing such a project. The key points concern timing and the definition of a regular schedule of visits, the availability of volunteers, the presence of a community-trained guide, the maximum number of people per group, the definition of the right price to ensure the experience is sustainable and beneficial for all parties involved, and the actual possibility and ability to reach an interested target audience. Already uploaded online to the WAYS platform, in a version currently being refined, the tour package will be tested between summer and autumn 2026. The tour operator recommends tying it with major events already scheduled in the city, such as the Tocatì festival in September and the Città di Verona tournament in October. We are working to make all this possible. We are also working on the idea of promoting an initial free trial, to introduce the Veronese to a still untold and fascinating story, in its own way an expression of cultural transformation.

The Mountain Trail of Farra di Mel

In a completely different setting, in the pre-Alpine mountains, nestled in the Dolomites, the small ludic community of To Vegna and Farra di Mel, a hamlet of about 400 inhabitants, has developed a tourist trail that begins on the edge of the village with its chapel of Sant'Antonio. It traverses the meadows, pastures, and woods surrounding the town, leading tourists through local history and the memories of its residents, inviting them to share the pleasure of gathering in the town square to play. Visitors pass through key locations in the town, discovering place names and stories told by diverse voices, guided by local expert volunteers from the "CRAL Farrese" association. There will be no tour operator here, but the tour will work directly with the local tourist offices and municipal officials. A collaboration has been established with a local association, ISOIPSE, which specialises in participatory processes and the valorisation of local heritage. Two experimental tourist walks have already been planned, one on July 15th and one in early September, as part of important local events that coincide with the summer festival calendar. Between April 30th and May 1st, we spent two days of intense collaborative work with the community to develop the itinerary, define the times, locations, and people to involve, and engage with local institutions. We emerged enriched, as we hope will be the tourists who visit this extraordinary community: welcoming, inclusive, deeply rooted in its history, which has established a "To'vegna school" in the square every Monday evening. This is a moment for seniors, adults, and children to meet, where the transmission of the community's living heritage becomes a shared commitment and a shared pleasure.

Traditional Rowing on Garda and the Lagoon

Now let's turn to the more complex case of standing rowing, Venetian-style rowing, and Venetian-style rowing. We decided to bring two different contexts to the attention of the LHJ community: Lake Garda, with the tradition of the Bisse in the Bardolino club, and the Venetian Lagoon, with Gloria Rogliani's association. Here, traditional sports become central to transmitting a complex heritage, tied to the memory of fishing and life on the water, gradually transformed into a traditional sport. The development of the tourist experience in Bardolino is already online on the WAYS Tour platform, while in Venice we will be present on June 4th for the final definition and documentation of the itinerary with Gloria Rogliani. This experience will combine the "rowing school" in Cavana Tintoretto, a location already familiar to the project community thanks to the first transnational meeting, with a longer tour in a small motorboat, allowing us to experience Venice while discovering some of its key locations: an artisan shipyard, known as a squero in Venice, the city's canals, the Arsenale, and the lagoon. The return to Cavana will be an opportunity to share local food. Since Gloria already has experience in tourism, trained guides, and a vibrant community of young rowers, we plan to test the route between late summer and autumn. In both contexts, the collected profits will be used by the communities to purchase new traditional boats, or to restore old ones, school boats, thus contributing at the same time to the revitalisation of traditional crafts and the transmission of this extraordinary heritage to the new generations.

Conclusion

The three contexts required different strategies, both in terms of fieldwork with the three communities and in terms of the ongoing development of tailored communication and promotion strategies. Mediation between the tourism sector and the community proved highly complex, requiring a commitment from AGA that certainly exceeded expectations. At the same time, this commitment has opened dialogues and opened up prospects for safeguarding living heritage, strengthening dialogue with institutions at all levels: local, regional, national, and even international. Thanks to the actions undertaken, we have entered into a partnership with a Council of Europe itinerary, Via Querinissima, which develops tourism experiences in the footsteps of a famous Venetian navigator. We also work locally with territorial tourism development agencies, such as the Destination Verona & Garda Foundation. Finally, the Veneto Region has involved AGA in a promising INTERREG Alpine Space project, Balance, which was recently awarded. This project will allow us to continue working with the rowing community on the protection of the natural environment through traditional knowledge, linking sustainable tourism, the protection of living heritage with that of the biodiversity of Alpine lakes.