Milan is a city of real cultural, linguistic and social diversity. In the San Siro neighbourhood, where the museum is based, many foreign residents live with real economic and social fragility, and a similar kind of exclusion shows up elsewhere too, in schools and among people with physical and cognitive disabilities.
What is missing is not the will to include these groups but proposals actually built around their needs: adapted museum experiences that people with disabilities, school classes and foreign residents can genuinely take part in, rather than a standard visit they have to fit themselves into. A museum's collection, told through the right language and mediation, can become a real point of cultural participation and social inclusion for all of them.
The project
"Oggetti che Parlano" pursues one aim across three groups: the active participation and cultural dignity of people with physical and cognitive disabilities, of school classes in disadvantaged contexts, and of foreign residents. In each case, the museum becomes a bridge to culture, using different but equally considered forms of language and mediation for each group.
Museum objects themselves become the common thread, a tool for dialogue adapted through facilitated and visual language, storytelling and sensory experience. The guiding principles throughout are accessibility, participation, equity and inclusion, applied consistently whether the visitor is a child in a disadvantaged school, an adult with a cognitive disability, or a newly arrived resident of the city.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries number 700 people in total: 300 people with physical or cognitive disabilities and foreign adults or young people, and 400 students.
Its impact reaches further, to at least 30 partner organisations across the Milan area and beyond, including day centres, cooperatives, adult education centres and schools, as well as the museum's own educational staff, participants' families and caregivers, and the wider city of Milan.
Project name: OGGETTI CHE PARLANO. Percorsi museali inclusivi
Proposing organisation: Fondazione PIME ETS
Area of intervention: Inclusion & Social Development
Country: Italy