Who is developing the project?

Il Laboratorio Cooperativa Sociale – BAM! Strategie Culturali

The project is realized with funds provided by Compagnia di San Paolo in the framework of the call Open Community (innovative project of audience engagement).

Brief description

Open Vicoli is an 18 months project that aim to build an alliance for the street of Genoa (“vicoli” little typical italian city alleys) within social workers, cultural operators, local museums.

The goal is to put the efforts carried out by the various organizations that operate and live in the territory of the historic center of Genoa into a system, creating a stable and ever-expanding network that unites the world of culture with the social world in a structured dialogue, to experiment the methods of involvement and participation and bring citizens closer to the culture and the heritage widespread in the project area.

The project involve an open partnership of 25 museum, cultural and social operators.

Brief project video description also at this link.

Objectives of the Project

The main objective is to build together a new vision of the alleys: from problem to proposal, from excluded territory to shared value.

The OpenVicoli network wants to bring together the communities of citizens who live and live in the historic center of Genoa with the offer of museums

Specifically:

• expand and diversify museum audiences
• reposition museums in the eyes of the neighborhood as spaces open to citizenship and creativity, innovating the cultural offer of the institutions
• engage the methods of audience engagement on social animation/community engagement experiences already rooted in the territory
• create links between museum collections and the tangible and intangible heritage spread in Genoa historic center

Tools and Methods

Through co-planning paths, oriented to the sharing of professional experiences, the network works on the creation of creative workshops to be carried out within one or more partner museums, thinking and structuring routes between territory and museums.

Workshops: They are carried out within the museums, involving the communities of the historic center in processes of appropriation and creative re-elaboration of the museums’ heritage and collections, with final events open to the public.

Paths: They are carried out outside the museums but in collaboration with their educational services, enabling members of the community as mediators and narrators of the widespread cultural heritage in the neighborhood and co-creating discovery itineraries with them. Discovery itineraries will remain in dowry to museum institutions, innovating their offer and link it to the neighborhood.

What methodologies does the project use?

• participatory processes
• digital tools
• cultural heritage

General context

The territory where the project is located are the districts of Prè and della Maddalena and the area of the ancient Jewish ghetto (via del Campo), in the historic center of Genoa. An area of alleyways perceived for decades as a wound to heal in the historic center, yet the area preserve a priceless material and immaterial heritage – noble palaces, baroque churches, votive niches and portals, historical shops – and border with the most important museums of the city: the Civic Museums of Strada Nuova and the Museo del Risorgimento, the National Museums of Palazzo Reale and Palazzo Spinola, the Galata Museo del Mare.

Selected tags about the project

#openvicoli
#openmuseum
#audienceengagement
#coplanning

How does it develop in time?

18 months from February 2019 to July 2020

Beneficiary

Citizens of Genoa City Center

Results

• 4 projects co-planned by 4 working groups composed by a museum, a social operator, a cultural operator. Each projects plan formats able to involve local communities in creative re-elaboration starting from museum collections and from neighbourhoods cultural heritage.
• each of this project develop actions to engage new public: i.e. artistic training for cultural operators and for children affected by autism, artistic laboratory for citizens, events inside and outside the museum, visits for children to the museums, etc.
• 1 plenary openvicoli network meeting

Results ongoing more info at:
https://www.openvicoli.it/2019/10/01/da-maggio-ad-oggi-cosa-ha-fatto-la-rete-di-openvicoli/

How is it evaluated?

ongoing process

Links and references

https://www.openvicoli.it/videogallery/
https://www.openvicoli.it/la-rete/