PATRIMONIO CULTURALE E NUOVI MEDIA: PICCOLI MUSEI E LABORATORI DIDATTICI

Nowadays we are attending a rapid and radical change of the Society, investing structures, relationships, social values, and so this development increases the social context complexity. Museum, as an always "mirror" of Society, is deeply affected by the ongoing epochal breakthrough: it is precisely this processing upon which emerges a requirement to develop innovative strategies and activities meeting new educational needs in order to promote an inclusive approach at our cultural Heritage, that is extremely important to involve a sense of civic duty and of ethics, on which should be based society. Cultural Heritage becomes a true bearer of values new forms, both economically and socially but, notably, in education. It begins, in fact, to emerge the importance of actions times, in order to act positively on the democratization process, using a new concept of Culture, Well and Museum. According to this views and changes that have taken place in recent years, it is important to underline, both national and international, general considerations in order to guide our research: reflecting about the educational role of the museum, within a framework of lifelong learning, redefining tools and strategies to reach different audiences to cultural Heritage. The main purpose of this work is to emphasize the importance of Museum like educational resource aimed at a wider audience, which offers active learning experiences, structured with the sharing of traditional communication tools like educational workshops and innovative tools like new technologies. The creation of rich and stimulating contests, integrated approaches, interdisciplinary and intersectoral environments acquire relevance for a visitor's involvement and contribute to make a Museum meaningful experience. Leading the research it was necessary a careful epistemological path in order to define different approaches at educational Museum, from new Museologies to the critical Pedagogy developed by Hopper Greenhill. The theme, developed through a legal, lexical and historical, deepening, has allowed the collection of theoretical principles about Museum teaching methodology, supplied thanks to Dewey's contribution, to theories about learning in the Museum by Hein and to Anglophone, until Anglophone studies about Heritage Interpretation. This analysis allowed the systems construction and actions improvement applicable in the Museum context, specifically in case of Meridiana, a local company that focuses on delivering services for tourism. These items have actually fueled the research focusing on new and exciting routes around the central education question: finding solutions in order to improve the approach toward and encourage Cultural Heritage awareness to the public, especially in a small museum, and detect whether and how educational workshops and new technologies, combined together, might facilitate the relationship between museum and its audience. The survey, carried out in the period 2013-2016, is contextualized in the specific context of Meridiana, was started through two types of semi-structured questionnaires in order to highlight the relationship between the museum and its audience. The qualitative and quantitative collected data were used to outline the informative, organizational and educational-teaching aspect of tourism services offered by the holding. Specifically the questionnaires have showed the public appreciation and satisfaction about educational trails and activities and, through readings, it was possible to outline strengths and the weaknesses about the reference contexts. Know how to prepare a visit, the suggested tools to improve teaching and suggestions for the future, have allowed the research to highlight the elements to work in order to optimize activities, organization and proposals. The research has highlighted the importance of involving the target audience further away from museums, students from 10 until 19 years, and trying to detect their needs. Specifically, the study of theories and approaches with particular reference to Nuzzaci, focused on educational workshop design, thanks to the contribution of Learning Design studies (Laurillard), and about educational practices and didactic mediators (Damiano E.). From monitoring results on questionnaires replies of teachers, it was possible to reflect on the design of a specific workshop, about how, on activities, on various teaching strategies used, that determine it as device. Today the Museum, to be as an educational context, must be able to communicate: the setting design, location, time, equipment and mediators. Also the operator who designs and implements the action at the museum and especially, the museum education activities, become key elements in order to bring the public and create dynamic and interactive environments aimed at encouraging the active participation of the visitors and their approach to the Cultural Heritage. This research reveals three key elements on which it is important to set routes and activities which can satisfy and, thus, bring the visitor, principally students, to the cultural Heritage: the organization, however the know-how of designed contexts, activities and workshops; the operator, who develop the route and the mode of interaction with the public; the collection of space, time and materials that define the learning workshop as a device, through which it performs the didactic action. The design, in, these terms plays a key role: it becomes an essential element to connect the three mentioned factors and puts them into a system in the same device, allowing, during the action, a continuous assessment of these and a raise, in correlation to needs, expectations and intentions of the service users. The research results provide valuable insights in order to guide and to improve the paths, the tools and, specifically, active teaching methodology learning services, in order to make the most active participants, including through new technologies that become promotional and involvement tool. The data also suggest the importance of working with online pre / post-visit materials on the site, shown in advance, to deepen and reinforce content related to the cultural heritage to be valued. There is also a need to coordinate projects between school and Museum, aimed at developing direct experiences and exploration to implement heritage education and active citizenship, expanding and strengthening the dimension of learning, in line with the National Curriculum Guidelines. Actually the world is moving towards an era where interactive installations, screens and touch screen will occupy the contexts and take over, but thanks to this research, it highlights the potential of synergistic action between traditional and innovative forms, which can transform the experience museum, participated in something meaningful.