The Ecomuseum is a museum of and for the community: participation is its essence. It aims to make the landscape more fully and clearly readable to its visitors. Learning to see and understand the places that surround us is a necessary first step in the process of taking care of the landscape and improving it. The Ecomuseum of Parabiago actively encourages the participation of citizens in safeguarding local heritage. It is based on a 'pact' whereby the local community is committed to working together for the care of the landscape. The community has identified the local heritage that needs to be valorised: almost 50 monuments, cultural and natural sites have been studied and mapped and, in some cases, their redevelopment has been designed and implemented. Stories and traditions are connected with each place.

The Ecomuseum took on the role of enabling a complex network of actors that has allowed people to recognise the community heritage, to take care of it, to manage and restore it through verious types of collaboration agreements. On the 23rd of March 2016 the agreement for the care and enhancement of the agroecosystems and the supplying of local products was signed, so that the Olona river, Bozzente stream, the Villoresi canal and their territories in the Alto-Milanese could resume their ecological, economic and cultural functions.