Abstract:

Local heritage, sum of all the variety of “cultural contents”, often undisclosed within bigger museums and smaller institutions, plays a huge part in tracing the identity of a place and so of the people inhabiting said place, but it’s sometimes difficult to transmit to the audience: popular dissemination of the “less known” yet very dense history might be not immediate due to a perception of distance from everyday life, much more for the younger audience.
Focusing on the Italian territory, especially the metropolitan area of Milan, an on-site analysis shows how culture-related activities within secondary education institutions seems to lack in network programmes, often confined to the activity and passion of a single or group of teachers, mostly linked to traditional ways of relating with museums and exhibitions.
Younger targets are of course used to very engaging and visually captivating - and activating - mediums, while most milanese institutions still struggle with outdated technologies and scarse interaction, in a cultural system that sometimes promotes poorly inclusive initiatives: museums are ideally designed to engage and interest a wide variety of audiences, but teenagers are a largely overlooked segment. In fact, if there are various workshop initiatives for the little ones, while the 13-18 age group is often excluded from projects aimed at more interactive and dynamic experiences: this population is identified as a group often excluded from the curatorial strategies of a museum. Cultural institutions, even if not with the same advance on the Italian territory, have already covered an important space on the Internet for some time, as illustrated by the myriad of virtual museums and online exhibitions or by the Google Art Project, which allows web users to view tens of thousands of digitized works from the collections of renowned institutions (such as the MoMA, the National Gallery, the Tate Britain and the Van Gogh Museum, but also some Italian and Milanese museums, albeit in reduced form). However, this digital presence is often based on a one-sided definition of the museum offer, with very little input from users; the development of digital devices, together with experience of social networks, leads visitors, on the contrary, to want to get involved, to make the museum's offer their own, even as far as creating content. Therefore, gamification approaches come in handy: gamification represents, as sources cited in this paper also state, an excellent strategy to bring cultural content closer to an audience that, as a rule, does not present itself as particularly inclined or eager to delve into museum themes in the traditional way. Some strategies could include imagining, in a virtual space, one’s own ideal museum consisting of digitized museum works, together with personal content; the dispersion of hybrid temporary exhibitions, where they can get to know the authors who produce contemporary culture; assuming the role of proto-curators, contributing to the choice of the pieces that will be unveiled within an experimental exhibition. The irreplaceable nature of the museum experience, intended as contemplation of works and collections, remains however clear. The article serves as a pilot study for future research on the theme of developing democratic and democratizing tools which can help the younger perceive the local museum not as a fixed and strict entity, but more as an engaging educational and captivating activity.

Keywords:

Secondary Education, Local Heritage, Gamification, Culture Proximity.