MusLi (Museums Literacy) - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Introduction
MusLi - No qualifications needed: museums and new audiences
This text grows out from the project Museums Literacy - Museums and audiences with a low schooling
level (MusLi), funded by the European Programme Lifelong Learning - Grundtvig Learning Partnership
2008-2010.
Museums Literacy has addressed the lack of visitors with low educational attainment in museum audiences,
confirmed by audience statistics as an important issue at international level.
Although with different nuances depending on the context, audience surveys show - almost without exception
- that when the number of museum visitors increases, visitors still belong to the most educated social
groups, while attracting visitors who do not have a solid cultural background remains a difficult task.
Museums today are generally considered to be a valuable environment for lifelong learning, enabling
people to develop, in accordance with contexts and programs, a wide range of skills and aptitudes 1 .
This consideration of museums as learning environments seems to confirm the Communication by
the European Commission “Delivering lifelong learning for knowledge, creativity and innovation”
(12.11.2007), which pinpoints: “Adults with a high level of education are more than six times as likely to
participate in lifelong learning as the low skilled”.
In spite of their equitable aims of open access to culture for all, museums as cultural institutions appear
to reaffirm and intensify the existing imbalance amongst their audiences in terms of cultural endowment
(and of social and economical conditions, as confirmed again by statistics). This raises questions for the
funders of culture, who are often expected to justify financial support for museums rather than for other
cultural and social activities perceived as more “basic” by a larger number of people.
The EC communication also calls for a new consideration of the very idea of the museum and its aims,
as already stated by the nouvelle muséologie, according to which museums are the product of a given
socio-cultural context and of its social premises of inclusion/exclusion. If museums are still nowadays
institutions for “cultivated people”, then it is easy to see how they have remained, like their 18 th and 19 th
century ancestors, exclusive rather than inclusive institutions; and this clashes with the contemporary
notion of culture as a key boost and tool for building citizenship, substantial equality, and the conditions
for personal and civic development in modern societies.
Seeing a direct causal relationship between schooling level and museum attendance might seem to be a
forced assumption. It may be better to consider this relationship as a “loose tie”, as suggested by Sacco
and Trimarchi 2 : i.e., all the cognitive, experiential, economic, professional drawbacks usually associated
with a low level of education, all together increase the “activation costs” 3 required for a museum visit.
1 Many researches and projects highlight the role of museums as a space for learning and addressing a wide range of learning objectives, not only the cognitive ones.
Amongst the projects funded by the European Union under the Socrates Programme:
AEM - Adult Education and the Museum, 1995-1997; MUSAEAM - Museums and Adult Education are More, 1997-99; Euroedult, 2001-2003; Collect & Share,
2003-2005 (the results of these projects are collected and documented inside the project Museums as Places for Lifelong Learning at the Web address: www.ibc.regione.
emilia-romagna.it/wcm/ibc/menu/dx/10progettieu/approfondimenti/museums.htm); Lifelong Museums Learning LLML, 2004-2006.
This last project’s final excellent publication is available on the web:
“Lifelong Learning in Museums. A European Handbook”, Edited by K. Gibbs, M. Sani and J. Thompson, Ferrara, EDISAI 2007
www.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.it/wcm/ibc/menu/attivita/07formaz/formdidat1/didamus/par1/materiali/par1/llml_en.pdf
Amongst the most significant attempts of measuring, not only in cognitive terms, the learning outcomes of a museum experience, see the definition of the “GLOs”
- Generic Learning Outcomes, as defined by the Re:source’s programme Inspiring Learning for All (now run by the British Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, see
the website: www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk).
2 P.L Sacco, M. Trimarchi, Il museo invisibile, 2003 (available in Italian at the URL: www.comune.torino.it/museiscuola/esperienze)
3 About the concept of “activation costs” in the cultural consumption see P.L. Sacco e S. Pedrini, Il distretto culturale: mito o opportunità?, 2003, Il Risparmio, vol. 3
and P.L. Sacco e L. Zarri, Cultura, promozione della libertà positiva e integrazione sociale, Economia della Cultura, 4, 2004
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