 Hello everybody. Thank you all for joining this third webinar of NEMO this year. I'm Ann. I'm the communications officer at NEMO. I hope the sound is okay. If you have any trouble hearing me, please let me know. NEMO, as probably most of you know, is the network of European museum organizations and it offers museums organizations, mainly a platform for exchange cooperation and inspiration. And that happens through a number of capacity building activities, as well as a continuous collection of resources, which you can mainly find on our website. NEMO has a concept of advocating, sharing, collaborating and training. And of course, we do not only support national museum organizations, but the museums themselves and museum professionals, which is probably why you are here today. And we think museums play a very important role for society, especially as places for dialogue and encounter. And that became particularly evident when the number of refugees that arrived in Europe are particularly increased. And as one of the first responses, NEMO decided to collect a list of museum projects that dealt with refugees and migrants, but also guidelines that were developed prior by museum organizations. To give museums a chance to find a source of inspiration, but also see ideas that might help them in their work. And we of course want to take this further. And so I'm very excited that today we can host this webinar and we're able to have Simone Bodo, who's an independent researcher and consultant, mainly concerned with the social agency of museums. To provide an overview of the museum's response to the growing diversity of their audiences, but also to introduce some experimental strands of practice that are now being, yeah, talked about by museums and that might be questioning the idea of intercultural work as we know it. Personally, Simone will also introduce us to a benchmarking tool, which she was involved in developing that helps cultural institutions to benchmark diversity management. So now I would like to leave the floor to Simone and hope that you enjoy this webinar. Thank you. Hi everybody. It's a great pleasure to be connected with so many people from all over Europe, from what I could see also from the States, Guatemala, Canada. I really regret not able to see you. The other thing I most regret is that you can see me because webcams has this distinguishing picture of making everybody look horrible. In any case, let's start with our webinar. One thing I should say by way of introduction is that if you have any questions or comments on what I will be saying. You can write in the chat. And then at the end of the session, I will try and answer. Well, I don't know if I'll be able to answer all your questions, but I'll try as best as I can to pick up on some of them. Anyway, so, first of all, I should clarify why I use the expression, the title of my session I talk about exploring new paradigms. And in so doing, I will try and raise a few issues, which I think are becoming central for any museum aspiring to become into cultural space. The first of such issues is a certain ambiguity around the very notion of what intercultural work in a museum is. In remarks I will make on this subject, maybe familiar to some of you, I'm sure, because they are the result of my research in the past five years or so. The reason I pick up on them is that I believe they are as relevant today as they were when I was first involved in a study in 2007 and commissioned by the BG Education and Culture of the European Commission on National Approaches to Intercultural Dialogue in Europe. That was in preparation of the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. And then these issues kept coming up in other subsequent European projects in which I was involved, including Map4ID, that is, Museums as Places for Intercultural Dialogue, and then the Learning Museum, Broken Immigrants Cultural Participation. You will see all of these projects listed at the end of my slides. So as a team expert involved in all of these projects, my key research focus has always been on investigating the different understandings of intercultural dialogue and the resulting policy approaches to its promotion in museums across Europe. From a very specific and deliberate perspective, there is how cross-cultural interaction is or is not a challenge. There is interaction between different groups and not only targeted only to migrants. And the key argument resulting from all of these servants was that, and still is, that in the museum sector intercultural dialogue is mostly still seen more as a goal to be attained than as a process which is ingrained in a museum's practice and in how it actually encourages multiple visions and interpretations. So here is very quickly an overview of the prevailing policy approaches developed by museums in response to the growing diversity of European societies. I am fully aware that these reflect, mostly reflect a Western European perspective, but I hope that nonetheless they, you know, my reflections will be useful for all of you. The first approach can be described as a showcasing difference approach that is all those programs, initiatives which are aimed at promoting native audiences a better understanding and greater respect of other cultures. So, for instance, blockbusters exhibition on African art and so on. I mean, this is of course the most widespread example, but of course I'm talking also about education programs and the like. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have what we could call a heritage literacy approach, which is basically at helping new citizens become more familiar with their receiving countries history, language values and traditions. And finally, this is an approach which is quite common in ethnographic museums, but not only, promoting cultural self-awareness in migrant communities through what is called in jargon, museum jargon cultural literacy program. So as you can see very different responses, which reflect not only that ambiguity around the very notion of intercultural work I was referring to at the beginning of the session, but also the historical fact that most museums, far from being created, established for the sake of cultural diversity or in order to enhance intercultural confidence, were created to represent and validate national, local and group identities. And today are clearly at odds with the new social and political agenda. These approaches, as different as they may seem, also has some key features in common. First of all, they tend to be informed by a very traditional, static notion of heritage, which is primarily seen as a closed system of received partial money to safeguard and transmit. The second feature that these approaches have in common is that they tend to build projects which are targeted either to migrants or to a native audience, thereby generally avoiding cross-cultural interaction. And thirdly, even where interaction of some sort is encouraged between different groups, the main aim is to promote mutual knowledge and respect, which of course is already a very important goal, but they don't really initiate knowledge systems, relationships and interpretive communities. So, of course, I'm not suggesting that these three approaches are very briefly outlined are to be discredited or abandoned, as they all have a very important role to play, not least in supporting a multicultural base and in helping individuals with a migrant background to retain a battle with their tradition. What I rather wish to argue is that these approaches, these more traditional approaches, find a new and fuller legitimacy insofar as they are seen as part of the process and gradual journey as you see in the slide, which is ultimately aimed at creating third spaces or shared spaces if you prefer. And there is spaces where individuals are finally allowed to cross the boundaries of belonging and offered genuine opportunities for self-examination and collaboratively making. So, new challenges for museums, in other words, are to go beyond policies targeting individuals and groups according to their ethnicity, working on identity as the start, rather than the end of the conversation. That is, in other words, addressing needs, not backgrounds. Another challenge is to facilitate new connections between people and objects, generating new, inclusive and shared meanings around collections. And this implies, of course, to go beyond that static notion of heritage, we just briefly looked at in the previous slide, and to move, for example, experiment with new interpretation strategies, we will come back to this later on. More in general, the challenge is to shape heritage, not so much as a mark of distinction as a shared space of social interaction. The ability of museums to rise to this challenge requires a very honest and thoughtful reflection, investigation of what it really means to carry out intercultural work in a museum. Is it about enhancing heritage literacy? This is very often connected with feeling cultural deficits, so to speak, in the eyes of many museum professionals. Is it about compensating past misrepresentations in museums in the eyes of native audiences? Promoting cultural self-awareness? Or is it rather a bidirectional process, which is dialogical and transformative on both sides, and in which all are equal participants? So, big questions, but now, turning from a theoretical to a more practical level, it is interesting to see how these issues have been bringing up so far. I reflected in a benchmarking tool for diversity management in cultural institutions, so not limited to museums, but including also theatres, libraries, archives, and so on, which was developed in the framework of a European project called both an immigrant cultural participation, and which was funded by the DG Home Affairs of the European Commission. This benchmarking tool tracks the potential journey of an institution, in our case a museum, from a basic level where the cultural participation of immigrants is an imposed agenda, that is, the cultural institution reacts to outside pressure, to an advanced level where the museum fully reflects the diversity of the surrounding society and promotes fully-fledged post-cultural interaction. So now, you see in the slide, the tool was developed with different goals, we'll focus today only on the first one, so let's have a look at this benchmarking tool as a sort of grid intended to help museum professionals to carry out self-evaluation of where they are in terms of diversity management. Of course, bear in mind that their progress will be uneven in different areas. We'll have a look now at a closer look at least a couple of headings of this grid. Okay, you see that the headings are institutional vision and policy, visitors' audiences, co-programming, record cloth collections, narrative. Let's bear in mind that this tool was developed for a wide range of cultural institutions, not only museums, and partners, collaborators, staff, worlds, governing bodies, and suppliers. Let's go very quickly to have a look at the first two headings, that is, institutional vision and policy, and how visitors are perceived. Just to have an idea of how this journey can evolve towards a full-fledged post-cultural interaction, as I said. For instance, at the basic level, the promotion of MCP, of course, is the acronym for Migrant's Cultural Participation, is seen as a sociopolitical rather than a cultural goal. A cultural institution faces demands from policymakers or society. So, how this migrant cultural participation is envisioned by the cultural institutions, like making public statements in speeches or promotional documents. So, starting to state how important it is to reach out to people with a migrant background. Some first efforts are made to become more familiar with the surrounding communities, barriers to access and participation are identified. And in the headings, visitor audiences, you can see that the cultural institutions perceive immigrants as cultural visiting groups, whose differences are to be accommodated in some way or the other. The cultural institution uses random opportunities or individual contacts to identify and involve migrants as potential audiences. And more significantly, the cultural institution identifies immigrants as the exclusive target group for any migrant cultural participation project. Let's see what happens at the next stage, which we decided to call Lower Intermediate. Here, I would say the museum instead of cultural institution endorses a more dynamic understanding of culture. It's committed to the notion of diversity as richness and starts to implement this new policy by drafting key documents stating the importance of promoting the access of migrant audiences. Creates consultation groups and opportunities for exchange between museum staff and also other local actors. And what came out from the learning, sorry, from the consultation process is used to start to break down identified barriers to access and participation. Can you see it more clearly, maybe? At this stage, commitment to promoting the cultural participation of immigrants has been entrusted to a particular department of the museum, whether it be education outreach or access development. At this level, the second generation of immigrants has come into view. So basic level, basic needs, it's a matter of addressing people who have recently arrived and what very different needs. So second generation migrants come into view of the museum. And the museum starts to carry out surveys about surveys, identifies migrant groups and individuals as the main target group for its project. However, it also starts to seek opportunities to encourage interaction with native audiences. I mean, let's go on because it's a lot, I mean, you'll have plenty of time to have a look in detail at the, I cannot go for that. No, I don't think so. Sisi, the person in question. Sorry about this. Okay. Okay. So the upper and intermediate level. The museum sees itself as a cultural space for interaction, participation and cooperation. Diversity policies are seen as a tool for internal change so you can see how things are evolving. The results of consultation processes are fully integrated in the museum's migrants cultural participation policy. And the museum has created dedicated structures. For instance, working groups, specialist department, departmental collaboration and so on. The museum considered the needs, preferences and us creation of people with a migrant background on an equal footing with those of native visitors. We developed a foreign knowledge understanding of the local situation in terms of intercultural dynamics and integration collects information about migrants cultural participation on which consistent policies can be built regularly. And finally, the advanced level. There is a commitment to fully reflecting the cultural innovation at all institutional levels. The museum's policy documents or contracts with third parties contain statements to this fact. There is a commitment to build the intercultural competence into the institutional fabric and decision making processes. So once again, you see what kind of changes can take place. Okay. I mean, just this was just to give you an idea then you can download as you can see from the link in the slide. You can download this benchmarking tool from the MCP brokers website and have a closer look at it. One important remark to make about this tool is that, you know, the different levels described in it need not be seen in conflict with each other. In other words, the benchmarking tool is not meant to suggest that once a museum has reached the advanced level, then all the issues addressed at the other levels become relevant. And of course, ideally, a museum which has reached the advanced level in terms of institutional vision and policy, what this should be, ideally any reversible process. But on the other hand, programming or preferences can and should be adjusted to meet specific needs. For instance, let's see about all those programs running the museums in the UK for which are called as all programs English for other speakers of our language. So again, it might be the case that a museum which has advanced to the highest level, so to speak, in terms of diversity management will still keep on addressing these needs. We don't have to forget that migration is a multifaceted phenomenon, ranging from first arrivals to refugees, close to second, third generation immigrants who demand to take part in cultural life on the long terms and refuse to be pigeonholed as minority groups. So this means that we really cannot envisage a one size fiddle recipe to address this issue. So to explore on a yet more practical level, how museums can make their way through these different levels described in the benchmarking tool and how more in general they can address those challenges which we saw earlier on. And I would now focus on a particular strength of experimentation, which is currently flourishing in some particularly forward looking museums in Italy. That is the training and the active involvement of museum mediators with migrant background, which is aimed at exploring a more dialogical and multivocal interpretation of collections, whether it be through the planning of narrative trails, collaborative exhibitions and so on. And I will do it by having a closer look at a case study, which is particularly interesting because it shows that kind of institutional progression and change, which is outlined more in a more abstract way in the benchmarking tool. The case study is the museum mediators project run by the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo. For now I will call it GAMEC, a little bit more quick. In the early 2000, GAMEC started to address the issue of migrant cultural participation, starting from the acknowledgement that new citizens in Bergamo were actually not represented at all in the museum's audience. This led to the first project, the guests of our project, which was meant to understand on the ground, practically, how GAMEC was perceived by these new citizens, what kind of expectations, concerns and requests they had. And the interesting thing is that as a result of this project, one need which came up was to have a group of mediators with a migrant background which could act as a bridge between the museum and these non-audience. So the first training course for museum mediators was launched in 2007, which led to the creation of a permanent group of over 30 mediators, which still work for GAMEC today, keep on working for GAMEC today. It is interesting to underline that this initiative, this first training course, was from the start qualified as a cultural rather than a social initiative. And I think it is very important to stress this aspect of the museum mediators project as a whole, because since the beginning, because not only a matter of promoting audience development or promoting democratization of culture, which of course still is the case, as you can see in the second bullet point, the second objective, the second goal of the training course to encourage increased levels of awareness and use of the collections. But what is most significant is that from the very start, this training course showed a clear commitment on the part of the museum to exploring new interpretation strategies, which would create new connections between people and objects. Of course, mediators were and still are today rigorously trained from an artist's own point of view, but they also are encouraged to explore, to freely explore ways in which other dimensions of interpretation can be tapped in, alongside more traditional heritage literacy goals or concerns about scientific expertise. Over time, after this first training course for museum mediators, there were continued opportunities for further training for professional growth, option shared with Garmex educators and aimed at developing specific planning, interpretive and relational skills. We will look at one of them, interpretive skills, I mean, which is storytelling. And over time, the role of mediators gradually shifting from actinous bridges between the respective communities and the museum, mainly through visits in their mother tongue, to engaging diverse audiences in intercultural activities. So the active involvement of mediators in the planning of programs and activities is to today a constant feature of the museum's cultural policy, ranging from initiatives which are aimed at drawing new audiences in or welcoming refugees, for instance, to the design of more complex projects in which new interpretive communities are created, as the goals of the two storytellers in search of an author project clearly show. Storytelling actually was not a novelty for Garmex. In 2010, there was a training course which was specifically aimed at creating new storytelling skills in mediators, but at that time, the training course did not actually lead to the development of narrative trails. This time around, the 12 storytellers in search of an author's case, storytelling turned out to be a crucial tool first to overcome the museum's self-referential language, which is very often elitist and exclusively based on scientific expertise. But it also turned out to be a powerful tool to convey emotion and lived experiences alongside art historical contents and to help all individuals to approach heritage in a way that gets them personally involved. The second goal you see of this project is connected with the partnership which Garmex started with Naba is the acronym for New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. So there was also a cross-fertilization between narrative and creative perspectives on museum collections, because not only museum mediators developed their narrative trails, but also Naba students produced their own videos on the artworks which were chosen by museum mediators. So let's have a look at some excerpts from a couple of videos in the mother tongue of museum mediators. Just to give you an idea, then you have all links provided, you can have a look at them at land. Just to have an idea of how evocative and different distance they look and sound from more traditional guided tools. I'm sorry, there is no mother tongue, no mother tongue is English, so I'm going to show you. There is no mother tongue, and no mother tongue is English. For the most part, as he speaks about death... Tell you about the time when I saw life in the land that gave me life. My grandmother, who was the water carrier, gave it to me. She was proud, strong, impenetrable, like the water carrier of the painting of Massimo Calpirio. And that's not how I am. I don't have the strength of my grandmother, but I have all the strength to become and defend my life and that of my daughter. I have never seen my grandmother cry. I cry. I say, how much I cried. I cried while walking on the roads behind my loneliness. It seemed like I was born from the water in my stomach. I cried while I was looking at the pictures of my grandmother wanting me to come back when I was a child to sit on her knees while my body with her rough hands and hard work. Okay, sorry about this. I meant to show the Russian version. I mean, of course, Italian participants in the webinar benefited from this. But in any case, you will see all the links at the end of the slides. And you will find all the videos both in Italian and the mediators' other language. As you will have noticed, especially in the first video, there are parts where mediators are performing their stories with a magnified image of the artwork projected on the wall behind them. And this was part of the creative reinterpretation of the narrative trace on the part of Napa's students. So here you can find some links regarding the different projects which make part of the overall program with museum mediators. And these links are to the English version of the project descriptions. For Italian participants, you just go on the website Pacrimoni intercultura and in the section Experienzi, you will get all of these projects described in Italian, of course. Very briefly to conclude, I just wanted to strongly recommend you to have a look at another project which I'm sure will help you in exploring this experimental strand of actively involving museum mediators as new interpreters of cultural heritage, which is the project by a big-state museum, a project which is less interesting than Gammett's program with museum mediators because it didn't have the same institutional impact. It was limited in time. It did not leave a permanent trace in the institutional fabric. But it is, on the other hand, it's very interesting in terms of the effectiveness and the balance with which narrative trails were built in combining art historical content and autobiographical dimension. So once again, I recommend you to have a look at this. And as you can see, there is a documentary which is very interesting in Italian, not subtitled, but I have translated what mediators say in the documentary in English. So if you want to help the English translation, I can request that I can send it to you through Neymar Office. The last slides I just want to add very quickly. Of course, museums and immigration is a huge subject. I chose a very particular perspective to address the issue, instead of just staying at the surface of such a huge subject. But to make up for this very specific perspective, I added, at the end of my slides, some links to resources which you can easily find on the web, starting from websites and blogs. And here you see the further websites which I was involved. Reports, guidelines, record clause approaches, publications and papers, and recent documents by the EU and Council of Europe. Also an interesting upcoming conference in Stockholm in a few days. So the slides, I will make my slides available to Neymar Office. I don't know whether they are going to upload it on the website or send them to you individually, but definitely there for you. And now I think we should start maybe answering some questions. This one, could we use museums as a place to involve and manage multiculturalism in classrooms and in an educational context? Well, of course, yes. I think that in many countries, schools are the natural context in which to start this kind of work, because the classrooms are, you know, ideal places to have that cross-cultural interaction I was talking about. You know, on the website, which is translated into English as well, although, you know, not all the projects, unfortunately, there are many examples of intercultural projects in school. I think that a more challenging task would be to involve also adult audiences in these kind of programs. The initiatives that I'll showcase that are interesting and necessary, but for now I keep wondering whether we are not essentializing the groups involved by focusing on them, and especially in this sense of Brexit, Trump and the like, we are putting in enough effort to involve the disenfranchised locals. Well, what I like about these, maybe it was not clear from the slides, but in Gamek's example, for instance, as I said, mediators were first involved as bridges to reach their respective communities, but over the years, so I mean now 10 years, because it started in 2007, mediators have started to address diversified groups, so groups where both migrants and Italian people, and enfranchised people are involved, and also the Breira project was aimed at a diverse audience, so immigrants, yes, but mostly Italian frequent visitors, so I think that you can have good examples of that as well. I know Valentina, okay my question is, how can art museums improve access and participation through their collection through art, expanding collection, explore art by artists from minority groups? Well, definitely, but I mean the two examples I showed you come from art museums, and I think that apart from expanding collections which is in the case of art museums, particularly complex tasks, I think that using, for instance, storytelling is a very powerful way to get people interested and emotionally involved in collections while learning something about it from an art historical point of view. Please, sorry, I must be quickly answering because I'm trying to answer all the questions, to expand perhaps a little bit. How do we break notions of infrastructure, structural racism, that museums' distribution are also responsible, et cetera, especially in the context of the crisis of European border regime policies practices, since we talk about migration, refugees, and trans-migrants. I'm not sure I get the meaning. How do we break notion of infrastructural, structural racism? Chris, maybe you can expand on this because I don't understand the question. Are there any other questions while maybe Chris is writing? Yes? Sorry, but it's taking some time for Chris to write. Oh my goodness, I didn't see all the other... Okay, I meant living in museum work. How can you break notions of racism to museum work? Well, I mean, for instance, with mediators of migrant background, you get incredible insights into what complex experiences these people come from. Racism is very often focusing on labeling individuals according to their ethnicity, according to their religion and faith, and so on. And these mediators provide such a rich insight into the life experiences they come from and how these connect very deeply with life experiences of native audiences, so to speak. Sorry, I don't like this term, but it's the quickest I can use. I mean, you really create personal connections which go beyond issues of identities, fixed identities. I don't know who was in... There have been many discussions on transcultural heritage. You think adopting a transcultural perspective to heritage and museum curatorial practices could be more productive. What do you mean by transcultural? Because there is a lot of confusion between multicultural, intercultural, transcultural. I think that in a way, the project I very briefly introduced are transcultural. Third spaces, yes, absolutely. I think they're very, very far more productive than the traditional approaches I showed you earlier on in the slides. Okay. Sorry, I was told we have to terminate the webinar. I'm sorry because we could go on hours to discuss these issues could give me, of course, English not being my mother language, sometimes it's not very easy for me to make myself clear. In any case, I hope you enjoyed the webinar and please get in touch if you need any more feedback and discussion with me or the issues we've been touching in the webinar. Thank you very much.