An increasing number of museums are emphasizing the importance of their social role and are positioning themselves within their communities as havens to ensure their long-term viability. This has become a top priority for art institutions, which have historically been misunderstood by the public. In the context of Catalonia, a region in Spain, museums have turned to citizen participation as a primary educational approach. However, these educational efforts are currently fragmented and lack coherent guidance for their advancement.
This research examines the involvement of Catalan art museums as an educational tool designed to engage with local communities that have traditionally been neglected and overlooked. The study focuses on four specific cases: the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Museu d'Art de Cerdanyola, and the Museu de la Garrotxa. Using a qualitative approach, these four museums, located in different parts of Catalonia, are analyzed to comprehend the uses, interpretations, and behaviors that shape participatory processes. The study places emphasis on the role of museums within their respective regions and their significance in their surrounding communities.
The four museums exemplify citizen participation from an educational and site-specific standpoint. This means that educational programs are designed and tailored to meet the needs and interests of the people in the surrounding areas. As a result, these museums have evolved into educational tools that foster the empowerment of their local communities, which are characterized by a rich diversity in terms of generation, ethnicity, social background, and culture. By adopting a community-oriented approach, these initiatives bring to light the experiences and knowledge of individuals who have historically been marginalized in Catalan museums, granting them a sense of agency and underscoring the potential of participation as a crucial educational instrument.
The research thoroughly examines the impact of these educational programs on all parties involved, including participants, professionals, and artists. It seeks to establish indicators for assessing their influence and effectiveness. Ultimately, it aims to serve as a valuable and practical tool that enhances the museum sector in Catalonia and modernizes citizen participation as a high-quality educational resource.
Museum Education as a tool for managing the complexity of Mental Well-being
Maria Kalaridi - Linnaeus University, Sweden
Motivated by the organizational shift in the museal context and the fact that museum educators’ job is termed as pink-collar, while it operates under the mandates of an orange economy, the purpose of this inquiry is to understand how museum education can function as a tool for charting the complex issue of mental well-being. Through the methodological selection of semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, in accordance with the philosophical assumptions of interpretivism, this qualitative research is exploratory in nature. As the findings of this empirical study reveal, museum educators perceive mental well-being in a plethora of ways. Ranging from the quality of their interactions with their audience, as it is mediated through digital technologies to the function of museums as a third space that allows vulnerability and civic processes to unfold, both hedonic and eudaimonic components of well-being emerge. Crucial to the discussion of mental well-being in relation to museum educators, is the investigation of their organizational climate, which according to the participants is heavily problematic, in terms of finances and access to the right of work-life balance. Concluding, further research should focus on well-being, due to its complexity and the identified issues in the museum education domain posing a threat to it.
Further reading of the research paper can be done at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ymdoNj5kcVddmFW07SjGkmbNJmWfeFyHy0BaziEIJc/edit?usp=sharing
The first article of the European Pillar of Social Rights emphasizes the critical importance of providing adequate education and training to everyone, regardless of their educational needs, disabilities, or socio-cultural-economic backgrounds, to enable full participation in society (European Commission: European Pillar of Social Rights, 2018). In alignment with this principle, the latest definition of museums argues that their role consists, among other things, of serving communities by promoting accessible and inclusive education (ICOM, 2022). This encompasses not only the dissemination of knowledge but also the development of transversal skills, such as the ones identified by the European Council (European Council: Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning 2018/C 189/01, 2018). This study investigates how museum environments and their collections can assist students with cognitive disabilities inserted in school classrooms in developing multilingual competence, one of the key transversal skills identified by the European Council. The research focuses on creating museum-based learning paths supported by technology and designed according to the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (Meyer, A., Rose, D.H., Gordon, D.: Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. CAST Professional Publishing, Wakefield, 2014). The UDL framework was chosen as it aims to design educational experiences that are accessible to all types of learners. The experimental phase of the research involved designing and testing a program comprising four museum visits and four post-visit school activities over a span of 26 weeks. This program included 131 students from two high schools in Italy, with English proficiency levels ranging from A2 to B2 and various special educational needs. The study illustrates the integration of UDL guidelines into both the museum activities and the subsequent school activities. The objectives of this paper are to demonstrate how UDL principles were applied in the design of the learning program, to reflect on the practical applications of UDL in creating inclusive educational experiences, and to discuss the potential benefits and challenges associated with such integration. By presenting this research, the study aims to contribute to the discourse on inclusive education and underscore the significant role that museums can play in supporting diverse learners.
Because of the existing interfaces between the fields of archaeology and the natural sciences in the setting of a Greek archaeological museum, the exhibition space is considered as a field for non-formal education for dissemination of natural sciences as well. The ‘science educative islet’, is a museum structure mainly addressed at groups of kids aged 11-13 years old that embodies the relationship between natural sciences and archaeology as a result of both didactic and museographic transposition simultaneously.
But what about the museum educators who must intervene and inspire? The evaluation is addressed to the mediators, i.e. people of museums who design and conduct educational programs and mediate between the exhibits and the corresponding reference knowledge emanating from them on the one hand and the groups of visitors participating in the museum educational activities on the other hand. The results of this evaluation show that most mediators in our sample have a positive attitude towards the use of a structure such as ‘science educative islet’ to disseminate interdisciplinary elements between the two fields and it is possible to use it for 11–13-year-old children as a part of their museo-pedagogical policy. On the other hand, fear of in-depth scientific content and the need for such training was recorded. The results of the research contribute to the understanding of needs and possibilities, while solutions are proposed to remove obstacles and enrich the innovative educational process in museums.
https://youtu.be/B3UTHabLdT8
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