MusLi (Museums Literacy) - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

6 MusLi - No qualifications needed: museums and new audiences
“Education level” should not be considered as an isolated variable, but rather in complex interaction
with a set of other variables also related to the environment and the socio-demographic context – for
example, a person’s job and its impact on timeframes, lifestyles, living and mobility – or intimately
connected to the object – the museum. Let us think for instance about the impact of the nature of the
collections 4 on the attendance of less well-educated visitors; or to other much less schematizeable and
researched aspects, such as museum language and its link to local communities through programmes,
tools and initiatives.
Considering the plurality of elements which together make a museum attractive and accessible for
audiences lacking a “sufficient” cultural or experiential background, the title chosen for the project
was Museums Literacy, referring to the international definition of “literacy”, broadly discussed and
adopted for measuring competences of a linguistic-textual and scientific kind 5 .
Some aspects of the complex and hard-to-translate concept of literacy are particularly interesting:
• it is either used to refer to linguistic-textual or scientific skills or it concerns a complex range of
skills, competences and metacognitions
• the definition of such a cognitive and operational aptitude lies in some functional and personal objectives,
to which - in a constructivist conception of learning - the acquisition of skills and interpretive
competences of a “text”, as well as the acquisition of information and knowledge, is oriented
• contextual factors shape and orientate the interpretive strategies carried out by the individual (for
instance, the school environment and didactic strategies influence formal education; but let us also
think about how the social and personal context informs the interpretive strategies and the attribution
of meanings by the individual).
Transferring and applying the basic meanings of the concept of “literacy” to the range of cultural conditions
that make the museum experience possible and satisfactory for an individual – from a cognitive,
emotional, esthetical point of view – seemed very inspiring to the project partners.
The definition of “Museums Literacy” has the merit of embracing different elements, i.e.:
• the possession, by the potential users of the museum, of sufficient cultural capital for decoding and
appreciating complex cultural products
• more particularly a sufficient acquaintance with the consumption of complex cultural products that
may act by itself as an important motivational incentive6 4 A good example is the Museo Ferrari in Maranello (Italy), whose visitors have a low schooling level in a percentage ten points higher in comparison to the total
museums of Modena Province (24% against 14%). The datum can obviously be connected to the Ferrari “legend” and the big appeal of the firm’s founder’s personality,
Enzo Ferrari, on a large number of sports fans.
5 For the definitions of “Reading literacy”, “Mathematical Literacy” and “Scientific literacy” see the document conveying the conceptual and theoretical frame of the
OECD P.I.S.A. Program (Assessing Scientific, Reading and Mathematical Literacy. A Framework for PISA 2006, 2006; Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills. A New
Framework for Assessment, 2000).
6 According to the well known contribution by G. Stigler and G. Becker, the consumption of cultural products gives place to a “virtuous circle” stimulating an increasing
propensity towards new cultural consumptions, in a dynamics of “addiction” (G. Stiegler and G. Becker, “De gustibus non est disputandum”, American Economic
Review, vol. 67, 2, 1977). For a critical discussion of Stiegler and Becker’s approach see C. Duranti, P.L. Sacco e L. Zarri, La domanda di cultura nelle società avanzate:
premesse ad una metodologia transdisciplinare, Working Paper n°24, Nov. 2005, Facoltà di Economia di Forlì - Corso di Laurea in Economia delle Imprese Cooperative e
delle ONP (www.aiccon.it/file/convdoc/n.24.pdf)