The Museum as a "beacon" of Mental Wellbeing: Slow Art - The Art of Healing. A collaborative research of the Ionian University Museum Collections and the National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum.
As contemporary society emphasises the increasing need to deal with the challenges of mental health, the role and mission of the museum is being redefined. In this context, the museum and art have emerged as important agents of healing and self-expression. One effort in this direction is "Slow Art", an intervention to promote art and the museum as agents of mental and social health. Considering that art has, wrongly, been equated with the minimum observation time, Slow Art was created to encourage the philosophy of "slow observation" in art, with the perspective that the viewer not only discovers more but is also guided to a deeper self-knowledge through it. In this presentation, the Museum is analysed as a vehicle for promoting mental well-being, through a collaborative research of the Ionian University Museum Collections and the National Gallery, on the implementation of the "Slow Art" method in the National Gallery Corfu Annex. The results of ongoing research carried out on specific groups such as elderly people, families, migrants, students, etc. will be presented. The ultimate aim of this research is to encourage cultural and medical organisations to collaborate with each other for the enhancement of social inclusion and quality of life, by utilising art and museums as tools.
When trying to reach out to new or less known audiences, museum educators need to find the right partners or, better saying, the right interlocutors. People that know the communities, their interests, needs, challenges, and who, due to their position within the former can effectively create connections between museums and prospective new participants. Key informants, including community leaders, professionals, peers, or residents, are central for ethnographic research as a way, often the only way, to access those we wish to research. In this paper we argue that there are potential overlaps in this concept to museum education. Based on the methodologies and outcomes of the research projects “Local Knowledge” (2014-present), developed at Whitechapel Gallery (London); “Our km2” (2017-19), based at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), and the “Listening Lab – Youth, Culture, Participation” (2021-24), co-developed with five cultural institutions in Lisbon (Portugal), we will discuss the role and different types of key informants for community-based museum education. Museums are for many unknown places. However, when aiming to work with challenging audiences through educational programs, namely women of ethnically diverse backgrounds, the elderly, or youth, as exemplified in the projects that will be presented, museums need to understand themselves as places that do not know. In this sense, creating spaces for shared listening and decision-making is highly significant when initiating long-term and sustainable relationships with new groups.
“Everybody WellCAM” is the holistic approach to museums’ accessibility of the University Museum Center - CAM at the University of Padua.
Taking up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, the Faro Convention, and the new definition of Museum approved by ICOM, we have at first asked ourselves who the visitors to our museums are and who they could be, and what their needs are. We also wondered what obstacles they can find in the full enjoyment of cultural heritage, and what kind of barriers can prevent them from visiting our museums.
Therefore, we established three lines of action, aiming as follows:
* To guarantee accessibility to people with sensorial disabilities, such as blind, visually impaired, and deaf people;
* To guarantee accessibility to people with mental disabilities and/or people with Autism Spectrum Disorders - ASD;
* To guarantee accessibility to people who actually can’t come to the museums, due to health issues, age, or restrictions on personal freedom.
Each and every line of actions was co-designed from scratch in collaboration with the end users of our projects: the Italian Union for Blind and Visually Impaired People and the Hollman Foundation for the activities dealing with sensorial disabilities; a group of young people with ASD and the local agency of the National Health Service for the mental and cognitive disabilities; the educational departments of the House of Detention of Padua and of the nursing home “Opera della Provvidenza di Sant’Antonio”, respectively, for the projects with inmates and elders with dementia or cognitive impairment.
The co-creative approach ensured to meet the real needs of each public, preventing the risk of focusing on a misleading perception of their needs. The first step was meeting representatives of our variegate group of users, listening to each other, coming to know each other and being trained on how to deal with the different disabilities and perceptions.
This was crucial to finding strategies and techniques, also low-budget ones, truly effective in making our cultural heritage actually and fully accessible to the most diverse people.
In our presentation, we will tell our experiences along with the methodology and the strategies deployed in our projects. They are not short-lived opportunities, but a shared journey towards the full enjoyment of cultural heritage, all together.
The presentation aims at depicting a segment of an ongoing master's thesis research study within the framework of a postgraduate study program, leading to Master's Degree in Lighting Design from the Hellenic Open University (Student: Paris Kousoulos. Supervisors: Mara Spentza – Lambros Doulos).
The research investigates the anthropocentric and environmental issues raised by lighting design in public urban spaces, particularly those shaped by the requirements of a historic preservation area. The examined issues focus on the enhancement, utilization, and functionality of historic preserved buildings, building complexes, and gathering spaces, combined with the application of new technologies and contemporary lighting design techniques (dynamic, immersive, HCL), considering the regulations and restrictions dictated by European standards.
Concerning anthropocentric issues, the study emphasizes the role of lighting as a tool for communication, immersion, and interaction, through the process of searching, recognizing and confirming the collective and individual identity of the visitors. Guided by the physiology of human visual perception, the goal is to communicate the tangible and intangible cultural heritage and history of the city through the emotional response of diverse audiences.
Within this framework and applying the general theoretical approach of the study, a lighting strategy proposal (urban lighting strategy) is presented for a specific case study of an existing urban space in the historic center of Athens. The study area is integrated into a "museum environment," specifically the Museum of Modern Greek Culture in Monastiraki, Plaka, Athens.
The proposal of the study in this historical area, includes the operation of a lighting scenario for a certain period of the night, as a place to revive the concept of neighborhood, recreation and gathering, without losing the space its primary characteristics. The aim of the proposal is the process by which the visitor discovers, but also shares, the similar elements that unite him with his fellow human beings and those that differentiate him, redefining the "sense of belonging". In the context of a holistic approach, the Museum will dynamically include emotional learning, where light and the use of new technologies will be the means to strengthen cognitive ability, empathy and immersion, within the combined exhibition and interaction environments.
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