The workshop wants to share and discuss with the participants the case history and audience engagement practice experienced in the last 3 years by BAM! in managing the MUSEO SENIOR project.
MUSEO SENIOR has involved a group of senior citizens becoming ambassadors of the community, developing activities, communication strategies and new ways of sharing a cultural heritage in the ceramics museum district of the area of Savona, a small city in Liguria a north-western Italian region, well known for its artistic and industrial ceramics tradition. The activities of the project included: seminars, surveys and focus groups for seniors in the museums; a series of events directly organised by seniors for a general audience, in and out the museums; the editing of a guide to promote the visit of the Savona ceramics museums network; a crowdsourcing campaign to collect objects and stories about ceramics and the local material culture; a final temporary exhibition in 4 museums displaying objects and stories collected by the campaign; the creation of a stable advisory board of seniors for the museum district.
Benefits for the participants
Participants will have an overview of a 3-year audience development project designed in every step: from the first researches about the target to the engagement activities, to the final outreach phase. Moreover, the project is addressed to a specific target, the senior citizens, which is quite unusual in a museum landscape more and more focused on engaging new generations via digital means. The opportunity is to reflect on how the sharing of memories in a group of peers can become a powerful engagement tool for museums, especially when they deal with material culture in connection with a specific territory.
Format of the session
Lecture followed by a discussion - 1h30