The new image of the Museo delle Storie di Bergamo is the result of team work that involved the whole city, a collective project that began a year ago that we coordinated together with Fondazione Bergamo nella Storia.
On Wednesday 20 September the centenary of the Museo delle Storie di Bergamo was celebrated and the Foundation organized a special evening to celebrate the birthday together with the city. The event was an opportunity to unveil to the public the new Museum brand: “turning point for the city museum”, according to the mayor Giorgio Gori.
BAM! was invited to tell the behind the scenes story of this new identity. Here, in short, is what we did:
STEP 1: we started by studying all the aspects of the Foundation, from internal organization to communication, with special attention paid to the activities of museums and their relationship with the public. Then we listened, to collect and include different points of view: we interviewed the staff, consulted the founders and partners of Bergamo in History, met the protagonists of the cultural life of the city. Above all, we asked the opinion of museum visitors, distributing over 750 questionnaires to citizens and tourists.
The results, shared with the Foundation and the City in early 2017, confirmed the need to rethink the Foundation’s overall identity, aimed at creating a new collective framework to include the six museum sites, often perceived as disconnected entities.
STEP 2: in May, together with the Foundation, we invited about 30 people including representatives from the city’s cultural institutions, companies from the world of communication, partners and collaborators to participate in a co-planning day. Divided into groups, the participants drew up a list of keywords and created together a series of possibilities: descriptions full of creativity and imagination, which brought back a new vision on the future of the city’s historical museums.
STEP 3: identity building! We relied on 3 different creative groups, who translated the suggestions proposed by the participants into words and graphic signs. Among the proposals, the Museo delle Storie di Bergamo created by Craq Design Studio immediately hit the mark for its immediacy, the ability to synthesize and the balance between the identity of the network and that of individual museums, and was chosen by the Foundation for the rebranding.
The multimedia content for the public presentation at the Convento di San Francesco:
- The mayor Giorgio Gori and the museum director Roberta Frigeni talk about what it means to rethink your own identity
- BAM!’s role in the event
- The process, shown in detail
- The press report following the event
