MusLi (Museums Literacy) - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

78 MusLi - No qualifications needed: museums and new audiences
case 05
The issue of language and ways for interacting with inmates
The experience at the Maison d’Arrêt de la Santé has highlighted the importance of how to address
and interact with people with a low literacy level. This issue of “how” alone deserves special attention
and training for museum professionals in order to better develop their communication skills to assure
a dynamic and invigorating transfer of their knowledge and ideas. All those who are directly or indirectly
implicated in the project should be trained in the different ways of addressing and interacting
(language, vocabulary level, attitudes and behaviours) that will allow them to better serve the needs of
those with low literacy skills.
The importance of “extra benefits”
The objectives set by cultural institutions are too often focused on acquiring skills and knowledge and are
too structured along the lines of traditional academic learning. This is occurring even as the dimension of
sociability plays a more and more significant role among the objectives sought by cultural institutions and
their partners. Yet, these social objectives, as well as those concerning intellectual and affective development
and social reintegration, are all deserving of a more detailed analysis and of a place as important as
those given to acquiring knowledge, as has been the tradition in most museums.
Finally, the evaluation program designed by the Maison d’Arrêt de la Santé and the Louvre Museum
raises the need to not adhere to an “adaptability to the market model” regarding the relationship between
museums and society (implementing a cultural “offer” in response to a potential “demand”), but
to develop a comprehensive and structured approach involving:
Adequate knowledge of the target audience’s norms, values, and social representations and their limitations;
Simple and easy access to information and support on available offers;
Solutions a person’s practical and personal difficulties when accessing the offer;
Implementation of an offer designed to be suitable and consistent
But also, thinking about how to enhance, concretely or symbolically, activity participation 3 in order to
go beyond the traditional concepts of accessing cultural products which would merely be “incidental
and occupational.”
3 In the example of the inmates in the Maison d’Arrêt de la Santé, participation certificates and reduction in sentences were favoured by participants.