Cultural institutions and organisations are increasingly recognising the importance of actively involving their audiences in renewal and positioning processes in order to create or re-establish deeper and more meaningful ties.
In a journey that has lasted little more than a year, we have steadily involved the local community around their civic museum, working together to achieve the objectives shared since the first meetings and progressively refined over time.
We are talking about the mentoring we organised for the Museo Civico Goffredo Bellini in Asola (MN), which turned to BAM! in 2023 for support in the process of enhancing and renewing its civic role as a reference point for local people.
The Museo Civico Goffredo Bellini is a symbol of Asola’s history and identity. Its collection, built up from that of local historian Goffredo Bellini, ranges from art to military history, natural sciences and archaeology: a vast array of historical artefacts that makes the museum not only a place of preservation, but also a place in which the community can recognise itself.
We therefore devised a pathway through which to support the Museo Bellini in matching its needs as a cultural institution with the needs of its community, actively involving it in creating a valuable impact for the town’s cultural system as a whole.
The museum from the community’s point of view: the participatory process
How do you see it? was the question around which we developed the coordinated identity and communication for the entire process. It encapsulates the Museo Bellini‘s desire to open up and listen to its community of around nine thousand inhabitants, which is characterised by a strong sense of identity and has always had strong ties to its history and its artistic and architectural heritage.
Following an initial phase of context analysis and mapping the organisations operating in the Asola area, we designed and facilitated two participatory meetings with local residents, which took place between April and May 2023.
During these sessions we listened to the expectations, needs and demands of the Asola community with respect to the museum, its spaces, its services and its role. This revealed the needs of the local people and the town’s cultural context, in which the museum appeared as a central player but was still perceived by many as an institution.
Looking at the broader cultural fabric, there was a perception of Asola as a town where people live well, but lacking social and intergenerational cohesion. Moreover, an as yet unexpressed potential was identified: both externally, considering the artistic and cultural heritage, and internally, due to the difficulty in involving the younger generations, who should represent the future of Asola.
From idea to mural: a co-design process by young people for the community
Following a public call, a diverse group of young people aged between 19 and 30, from Asola, Mantua and the neighbouring provinces, was formed in September 2023, with the aim of contributing varied views and experiences.
The challenge for this group was to take up themes and needs that emerged from the community and, starting with these, to co-design and then implement activities and actions to propose a new way of using the museum: as a civic place to be experienced, in close synergy with the town, rather than just an institution. The group of young people then played a leading role in a process, guided by BAM!, in which in-person and online training and workshops alternated, leading to the outline of a shared project and its implementation with the necessary tools.
The group’s ideas eventually turned to the creation of a participatory mural in the historical centre of Asola, involving the community and, in particular, young people and adolescents in all stages of the process. The idea was clear: the work was to be an opportunity to meet again as a community. Precisely for this reason, the initiative was named Arrivedersi.
The artist Davide Tolasi (Studio27Lab), street artist and lecturer at the LABA in Brescia, was then involved, called upon to support the process of creating the work, from the co-creation open workshops for the design to the actual painting of the mural.
From January to May 2024, the Arrivedersi project – culminating in the mural painting weekend – saw more than fifty people re-engage with the museum, called upon to share their ideas and finally get their hands dirty with paint to contribute to the initiative.
The mural proved to be the ideal project to engage young people and adults, people who were more active within the town’s cultural context and others who, until then, had felt more distant from it. A project that involved those who were ready to contribute actively and those who watched the process unfold with curiosity.
On this shared journey, we saw a civic museum open up to the town and give it carte blanche – in a surprisingly literal sense – by providing space for it to tell its story to the outside world as well.
The result is a public work for Asola, in which it can recognise itself through its identifying symbols and which can act as a guide for experimenting with new ways of experiencing the museum.
The wall on Via XXIV Maggio, which now speaks for itself, is a sign that another way of interacting is possible even for a small provincial community and that sometimes the key lies in designing it together, in the name of creativity.
